There was a nice article in the PMI Community post on the do’s and don’t’s of project scheduling:
http://www.pmi.org/eNews/Post/2008_05-09/WhatNotToDoWhenPrepProjectSchedule.html
Technically everything this article suggests is quite accurate for project scheduling. However, sometimes we seem to get stuck doing things too mechanically. My experience has been that the more tasks are scheduled as inter-dependant, the less hangers (as the writer calls it) you have in a project, the more likely you are to finish late and go over budget.
The book Critical Chain is an old favortie of mine that challenges this type of traditional mechanical project management techniques:
Contrary to the PMI article’s assertions, with regards to project scheduling, Goldratt’s stategy is to have as many hangers as possible. The idea is that any chain is as strong as its weakest link (i.e. the critical chain), so the less your tasks are dependant on each other, the more likely you are to allow people to work independantly and hit their targets; therefore the more likely it is for the project to finish on time.
Critical Chain is a highly recommended read whether you are a project manager or not. It opens your mind to a new way of thinking about defining and managing constraints. In this book Goldratt applies "theory of constraints" to project management. I can write a more detailed summary of the concepts in this book; if you are interested, let me know.
