Here we will discuss project scheduling and how important it is for delivering our project on time. We will start with an overview of the main components of project scheduling.
What is project scheduling?
Project scheduling is the process of creating your project schedule. The project schedule in a project refers to a roadmap of all activities to be done with specified order and within the time slot allotted to each activity. Project managers tend to define various tasks and project milestones and then arrange them keeping various factors in mind. They look for tasks like in a critical path in the schedule, which are necessary to complete in a specific manner (because of task interdependency) and strictly within the time allocated. Arrangement of tasks that lies out of critical path is less likely to impact the overall schedule of the project.
3 Main steps in creating a Schedule.
There are three main steps that you want to take when you’re creating your schedule.
1.Determine all the work that is to be performed
Find out all the work that is needed to be performed to build and deliver the product for your project. So you want to take the huddle and keep breaking it down into work packages. Then determine the various correlations between the work packages.
2. Determine who and what all resources are needed to perform the work
What are the manpower and resource that are required for that activity, how many of these resources are required, where are they coming from, etc? We have to consider the availability of the resource, holiday. This activity may also require specific requirements or subject matter experts.
3. Determine how long it will take to perform the work
How long will it take to perform the work? The way you get that information is you take the work and you have someone estimate how long it’s going to take to do that work and there are different formulas and past experiences that you can use to get the estimates. The people who are estimated will an experienced person or one who is involved in the activity. After the calculation of time for each activity calculate the time required for the total project.
Advantages of Project Scheduling
There are several advantages provided by the project schedule in project management:
- It simply ensures that everybody remains on the same page as far as tasks get completed, dependencies, and deadlines.
- It helps in identifying issues early and concerns like lack or unavailability of resources.
- It also helps to spot relationships and to watch the process.
- It provides effective budget management and risk mitigation.
- Increases productivity. By examining the sequence of tasks and therefore the resources assigned, perhaps periods are often found where resources are under-utilized.
- Reduces the delivery time. Once your original schedule is complete, you now can step back and determine what tasks might be started early or completed in parallel with other tasks.