glossary — plain english
Buffer
Time deliberately added to a plan to absorb slips. The difference between a plan that survives contact with reality and one that doesn't.
Every estimate on your plan is a guess, and some of the guesses are wrong. A buffer is the honest response: a block of unassigned time that exists to soak up the surprises, so a two-day slip in week one doesn't ripple all the way to the launch date.
The common mistake is padding every task a little and calling it planning. Padded tasks just expand to fill their padding — work is gases, not solids. The better move is to keep estimates honest and put one visible buffer where it protects the thing that matters: at the end of a risky chain of dependencies, right before the milestone someone external is counting on.
A plan with no buffer only works if nothing slips — which means the plan doesn't work. If the bars fill every day between now and the deadline, you haven't drawn a plan; you've drawn a bet.
See it on a real chart
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