Scott Berkun's chapter on creating a schedule is a great example of why it's the "art" of project management. If you approach creating a schedule as if time is an object that can be measured both precisely and accurately, then it is much more likely you will fail to generate a schedule that has any relationship to how the project will actually unfold. But Berkun really gets (and likes) people. When he asks why everyone is always a little late to meetings, he's not interested in the lateness so much as the way one person may be 5 minutes late and another 7 and another 10 but each of them can perceive themselves as being on time. (Music is sometimes called the art of time, and one of my favorite musician sayings is "Close enough for jazz.") Berkun embraces the subjective nature of time as we experience it, which makes a schedule a valuable tool for getting everyone on the same page in ways that are even more important than mere commitments to deadlines and milestones.
(Although David Allen says that you can't manage time you can only manage action, in fact his book Getting Things Done is actually all about the psychological experience of time and how to manage it. When I read Allen I think about the relationship a poet has with language versus a lexicographer.)
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