[Newspoetry] Schedules and TimeTables

[DL Emerick]

Schedules and TimeTables...

A date certain is a simple way to plan an event.  But, what of all the other days before and after that date?

Once upon a time, I was a master of a brand of software called budget-scheduling -- for McDonnell Douglas Corporation.

A date certain almost never occurs in any budget-schedule -- except for a planned starting date of some sequence(s) of activities.  The reason is quite simple and elementary.  After the initial date, all other event-dates are keyed to the completion of the contigent event-dates that precede each of the later ones.

For instance, 10 days after start-of-project date (whatever date it might be), we project that we will be able to initiate events 2, 5 and 9.  We estimate that each of these events will take x, y, and z days each -- so we the critical path of the projected plan is through Max(x,y,z), and so on.

The future is conditional and contingent.  Whenever a date fails to see the event planned for that date happen, then the project has to reschedule, taking into account the actual accomplishments -- to date.  (And, the budget aspect of all this, assuming time discounted money, lies in the correlation of expenses with events (planned first actual).

Of, the software is marvelous -- it always tells us what the latest schedule looks like -- never comitting us to a success that we haven't yet actually achieved, at some projected (if ever uncertain) price of performance.

We's even have to reschedule sometimes -- to reflect new contingencies in new events with new layers of cost -- although, theoretically only, it was also possible that a reschedule would reflect some new genius of insight, where we trimmed out events that proved unnecessary and whose costs we need not incur.  (The military would never accept the idea that we might have over-committed in defining the CYA (Cover-your-ass) schedule... and would almost never accept the idea the that a project couold be done for less money than initially projected... hence, only cost-overruns were ever possible in the military contracting environment...  always averaging far more than whatever was first planned... It would have been a mark of disgrace for some Officer to report that his project cost a lot less -- because it would meant the project was "easier"... and every officer knows you only get credit for solving hard problems...)


Oh, anyway...  the White House could say -- here are the conditions of a contingent time-table -- our projected exit date from Iraq is depending on accomplishing all the intermediate steps... and peg the events relative to one another... in a good old budget-schedule fashion.  Do they know how to do this?  Yes.  See my reference to the budget-schedule software the military makes all contractors use.

So, why are they lying about their inability to plan the future -- in the loose sense in which we always plan the future -- especially in military related matters?  They only wish to look dumb when they don't want to admit what the contingencies are.  And, incredible as it seems, not a person in Congress seems to know a damn thing about schedules and dates certain -- so as to be able to show how stupid the big white (house) lies of the White House are.