The need for third party assistance with schedule analysis and risk assessments has dramatically increased over the past year, despite the increasingly powerful software tools available to planners, schedulers and estimators. In light of this trend, Dr. Dan Patterson, CEO of Acumen (www.projectacumen.com), recently wrote a white paper entitled "Why Scheduling Mustn't Become and Extinct Science" which focuses on the keys to successful planning and then subsequently how to "work this plan" to improve project scheduling and overcome the two root causes of project failure.