Setting the Real Schedule

Effectively planning a project timeline starts with gathering the appropriate inputs to develop schedule process. And spending the time to carefully plan the activities, sequence them, define durations by gathering this data from performing resources, build resource calendars and get estimates is critical to the project.

It ensures a great start, good data and estimates that are better than just an educated guess.

But, I often find many holes in the scheduling exercise.

You have to deal with a lot of details about the activities being planned, the maintenance windows, resource availability (or unavailability), the timing and sequencing of activities, the amount of detail we have vs. the amount we actually need, etc.

I find it helpful to map out key activities on a wall, with the critical path being set and clear. Then I break the activities down and put the similar chunks of information together.

You don't always get a complete picture of the schedule--it's a progressive process. And you sometimes you miss some things when you don't visualize all the steps that you have to go through. But it fleshes out the dependencies and the risks.

Of course a lot depends on the project itself, how much information is already available and how much knowledge the person who does scheduling has about the technical side of the project itself.

Many project managers tend to bypass this process or minimize it and leave it to the day-to-day "figuring out" process, rather than planning the scheduling sessions with the team. That reduces the quality of the overall plan and forces the project to go through more changes than it has to.

Controlling the project schedule is a process that is done a lot easier when the upfront work is done. Coupled with accurate reporting on project status, the schedule can be easily adjusted and kept up to date and relevant, without constantly re-baselining the schedule.