Schedule Planning
Planning before scheduling
Schedule planning defines what the schedule must do before any activity is entered into software. Key concepts: the basis of schedule (scope, deliverables, assumptions, constraints, exclusions), scope and WBS decomposition, schedule level of detail from summary through execution level, activity coding dictionaries, calendar strategy, resource and cost loading decisions, and contract or schedule-specification requirements. A candidate should also know rolling-wave planning for undefined future work, schedule risk allowance strategy (contingency versus buffer), and the review and approval cycle that freezes the plan.
Traps: questions that blur planning with scheduling (planning decides approach and content; scheduling computes dates through logic). Another trap is treating calendars as a minor setting - a seven-day calendar can compress a five-day-calendar plan by months. Watch for missing basis-of-schedule documentation, coding schemes that cannot support reporting, and levels of detail inconsistent with the contract.
Worked example: a 200-workday activity on a five-day workweek calendar spans 40 weeks, or 280 calendar days. The same 200 workdays on a seven-day calendar spans 200 calendar days - 80 days earlier. Neither is wrong; the calendar must match the execution plan for the forecast to be credible.
Rule of thumb: if an assumption, constraint, or exclusion is not written in the basis of schedule, it does not exist for review purposes - and it will surface later as a dispute.