All too often project managers narrowly focus on the critical path tasks in a project to the exclusion of all other tasks. In many projects, however, what we call near-critical paths are just as likely to cause a project to experience schedule problems and miss the commitment date. To illustrate, let’s start with two definitions…

Casper of Dallas, TX asks: Our projects are subject to the weather for our installations. We build into our schedules and contracts at least 30 days of weather cushion (about one per week). What would be the best way of handling this in a project schedule? Please keep in mind that this is a cushion…