If your schedule is so tight that you cannot find any slippage time, use the weekends. Use that time to catch up on those tasks that have fallen behind. Plan for time, or even several periods of time, within the schedule when absolutely nothing is scheduled. Revisions follow reviews like night follows day however, most project managers schedule time only for the reviews, not the revisions. It allows for revision time following each review. Set the clock ahead, and give yourself some extra time to clean up loose ends. The same thing would happen if the deadline were July 20 or August 10. on July 30, as everyone scrambles to finalize last-minute changes. If your deadline is July 31, you can count on your office to be humming at 11:59 p.m. Tasks will generally expand to fill the available time. Everyone thinks in terms of calendar time, so use it when preparing your schedules. Now, see how much easier it is to determine the date that is 60 calendar days from today. To illustrate this point, try to determine the date, within a day or two, that is 60 work days from today. It’s prepared in calendar time, not in number of work days. Your schedule must show how these tasks interrelate. Tasks are never done in isolation, and most rely on information or results from a previous or concurrent task or group of tasks. It shows interrelationships among tasks very clearly. Otherwise, the team member won’t feel committed to the schedule and may not feel compelled to meet it. If you tell a team member that he or she must have a task finished by Wednesday, that team member must agree to get it done and believe that the task can be done under that time constraint. It has the commitment of the project team. Hopefully, these schedules will not change as a result of mistakes that you make, but they will change, nonetheless. No matter what you say or do, a high percentage of your schedules are going to change. In general, schedules that are in a graphic format are most easily communicated. If none of your team has ever seen a Critical Path Method Diagram (CPM), the last thing you want to do is use a CPM as your scheduling method. It’s easily communicated. Those who are doing the work must understand what the schedule is all about. Regardless of the scheduling system or the project, a number of specific attributes are found in many a good schedule. Is it really critical that an architecture or engineering project manager have a project schedule? Most clients and design firms will probably answer the question with "You must be kidding! Of course, you need a schedule, and a good one at that."