Project Management
Easy way to Learn Project Time Management Processes - Schedule Management Plan and Tools
13:20:00
Project time management is one the biggest challenges for managers. It is critical to manage and make sure every activity of the project runs as per schedule. No matter what happens on a project, time passes as it has least flexibility. Scheduling activities of a project are the main issues. Handling them effectively can only learnt by experience and training from peers. As inspired by the Project Managers from Indian School of Business who found ExcelR, we planned to contribute to share our knowledge to #PMSociety. Keeping aside all the complex definitions and explanations of "Project Management Professional", here we tried to simplify project time management by giving a high level overview and then drill down to key concepts with explanation. We shall start with Plan schedule management in this post and you can find rest of them in the laters posts. Keep visiting ExcelR or ContentTech for the key updates on #PMP . All the peers of project management are welcome to comment and contribute to the post.
Plan Schedule Management
To prepare schedule management plan you need to identify various parameters linked with the project, which help in executing it. Those parameters can be identified by using two fundamental questions like How ? & What ? .
How the process of "Time Management" will be performed using a schedule.
What ? Scope
What is the scope of the project ? identify the scope of the project to develop a schedule based on project requirements.
What ? Deliverables
What are the deliverables of a project ? identify them and plan the schedule accordingly. In this scenario one might have to hold meetings with all the stake holders to identify deliverables and feasibility of them.
What ? Policies & Procedures
What are the policies to be followed in a project ? identify the required policies and procedures to be followed, then plan accordingly. This might differ from one project to other. Organizational factors might have impact in this scenario.
What ? Activities
What are the activities to be carried out in a project ? identify and define them based on planned deliverables. Then plan on how to perform the activities.
How ? What ? Resources
How and what kind of resources to be assigned ? identify the activities nature and then verify the resources availability based on their skill set. Plan and select the qualified resources who meet the activity criteria.
How ? Duration
How to plan duration ? identify the planned activities and resources available to perform the activities. With respect to number of resources allocated to each activity assign an approximate time. Sum up the approximate amounts of all the activities to have an estimated duration.
How ? Milestones
How milestones can be set ? identify the planned activities and estimated duration, set up milestones accordingly to verify the completion of activities as per the duration planned.
How ? Budget
How budget can be planned ? identify the duration, no. of activities and no. of resources planned for each activity. Once you have these details, you have to check with organizational factors and other stake holders of the project to arrive at the budget which is feasible.
What ? Reports
What reports to be used ? identify what kind of reports to be used based on project implementation methodology
What ? Methodologies
What are the methodologies to be used in planning a project ? identify the methodologies required to plan a project and further to implement the project.
Methodologies may be :
Adaptive Project Framework
Agile Software Development
Crystal Methods
Dynamic Systems Development Model ( Successor of RAD methodology)
Extreme Programming
ITIL , JAD, Lean Development, RAD, SCRUM, Spiral, Waterfall etc.,
The combination of all the above activities and on implementing them with below given tools help in preparing a schedule management plan to accomplish one of the key processes of project time management i.e., "Plan Schedule Management".
Tools ?
Work Breakdown Structure
Terminal Elements
Statement of Work
Contract Data Requirements List
Expert Judgement
Analytical Techniques
Planner's: Primavera, Microsoft Project Professional, Smart sheet, Wrike, Asana
We shall discuss more on the above mentioned "Tools" in the later posts.
Result : Project Schedule Management Plan
0 comments