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Why Your Schedule Is No Good - And How To Fix It: "I've already said my piece on estimating software projects, so now I'd like to offer a word on the flip side of estimating - scheduling a project.  Estimating and scheduling are not the same.  Estimating is the practice of figuring out how many man-hours of labor something will take.  Scheduling is deciding when those man-hours of labor will take place.  For purposes of this article, suppose we're planning a project for a 3-person team.  We've estimated the project at about 3000 hours, which is roughly the equivalent of 6 work-months for a 3-person team. Many folks would say 'Great!  Today is February 23, so 6 months means we'll be ready to implement around August 23!  Let's get started!' and then be bitterly disappointed when August 23 rolls around and they find themselves with a late project and an angry client. The problem is in the way most people schedule projects.  They give dates that haven't been thought out very well in order to avoid upsetting the client, but the client ends up upset anyway because the project goes off track.  I prefer to make my clients upset at the START of the project, that way I know exactly how much time I have to win them back over - the length of the project (that was a joke).  Also, upset clients te"