Iterative project scheduling - a time bound technique

There may be dozens of deviations from a software development project plan. One example is delays in planned schedule. A project manager must decide how to handle them as any delay requires some action on the part of manager. The choices of software project managers are rather limited. First of all, right engineering talent can help. Thus temporarily reassigning senior engineers to a part of project that is suffering can be a viable option. Another option is requirement scrubbing as sometimes requirements are not essential and hence not needed. Therefore, such unnecessary requirements must be cut off. It is quiet possible that both strategies give no appropriate solution. In such circumstances best approach is to admit incorrectness of the original plans and schedule, and revise the schedule on the basis of new knowledge. This paper presents an iterative scheduling technique to help managers in such situations. Clearly, more severe are the consequences of a delay in schedule, the more important is to plan and reschedule. For example, if there is delay in the introduction of a product that has been scheduled for months and invitations have already been sent out to newspaper reporters and guests then almost any attempt to recover from such delay can be justified.