Project Schedule

A project schedule is a useful planning and communication tool for monitoring and reporting the progress of a project. During a project's life, different schedules may be needed for different purposes and stakeholders.

A project schedule consists of a list of a project's terminal elements with intended start and finish dates. Terminal elements are the lowest element in a schedule, which is not further subdivided. Those items are often estimated in terms of resource requirements, budget and duration, linked by dependencies and scheduled.

Before a project schedule can be created, a project manager should typically have a work breakdown structure (WBS), an effort estimate for each task, and a resource list with availability for each resource. If these are not yet available, it may be possible to create something that looks like a schedule, but it will essentially be a work of fiction. The reason for this is that a schedule itself is an estimate: each date in the schedule is estimated, and if those dates do not have the buy-in of the people who are going to do the work, the schedule will be inaccurate.

Many project scheduling software products exist which can do much of the tedious work of calculating the schedule automatically, and plenty of books and tutorials dedicated to teaching people how to use them. However, before a project manager can use these tools, he or she should understand the concepts behind the WBS, dependencies, resource allocation, critical paths, Gantt charts and earned value. These are the real keys to planning a successful project.

In order for a project schedule to be healthy, the following criteria must be met:

• The schedule must be constantly (weekly works best) updated
• The EAC (Estimate At Completion) value must be equal to the baseline value
• The remaining effort must be appropriately distributed among team members, taking into consideration vacations

Because of the uncertainty involved, the schedule is reviewed regularly, and it is often revised while the project is in progress. It continues to develop as the project moves forward, changes arise, risks come and go, and new risks are identified. The schedule essentially transforms the project from a vision to a time-based plan.

Schedules help you do the following:

• They provide a basis for you to monitor and control project activities
• They help you determine how best to allocate resources so you can achieve the project goal.
• They help you assess how time delays will impact the project
• You can figure out where excess resources are available to allocate to other projects
• They provide a basis to help you track project progress

With that in mind, what's the best way of building an accurate and effective schedule for your next project?

Project managers have a variety of tools to develop a project schedule - from the relatively simple process of action planning for small projects, to use of Gantt Charts and Network Analysis for large projects. Following is an outline for the key tools you will need for schedule development.