CMS Planning and Scheduling System

The paper describes the procedures and the system to build and maintain the schedules needed to manage time, resources, and progress of the CMS project. The system is based on the decomposition of the project into work packages, which can be each considered as a complete project with its own structure. The system promotes the distribution of the decision making and responsibilities to lower levels in the organisation by providing a state-of-the-art system to formalise the external commitments of the work packages without limiting their ability to modify their internal schedules to best meet their commitments. The system lets the project management focus on the interfaces between the work packages and alerts the management immediately if a conflict arises. The proposed system simplifies the planning and management process and eliminates the need for a large, centralised project management system.