Manage It!

Using Rolling-Wave Scheduling

Don’t try to plan the whole darn project at the beginning. You’ll be wrong, and you’ll be wasting time you could be spending removing obstacles so the project team can find their rhythm. Use rolling-wave planning (see Appendix 2, ​Glossary of Terms​) to make the most of your initial and ongoing scheduling and replanning activities.

If you’re accustomed to trying to schedule an entire project, rolling-wave planning might feel strange to you. You won’t generate an entire Gantt chart or know exactly what you’ll be doing three months from now. But honestly, how good are you at predicting the schedule that far out anyway? I’m not that good—things happen in a project. The further out the milestone, the less you know ...