The origins of schedule management: the concepts used in planning, allocating, visualizing and managing time in a project

Abstract

Getting the right people in the right place at the right time has always been a major organizational challenge. In ancient times this process seems to have been accomplished based on the scheme of arrangements being contained in the leader’s mind and instructions communicated verbally. Modern approaches to solving the twin challenges of first thinking through the ‘plan’ and then communicating the plan to the people who need to do ‘ the right work, at the right time, in the right place’ use sophisticated graphics, charts, diagrams, and computations. This paper traces the development of the concepts most project managers take for granted including bar charts and critical path schedules from their origins (which are far earlier than most people think) through to the modern day. The first section of the paper looks at the development of concepts that allow the visualization of time and other data. The second looks at the shift from static representations to dynamic modeling through the emergence of computers, dynamic calculations and integrated data from the 1950s to the present time.