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Lesson 3: Planning and Scheduling Projects
Building an Effective Project Schedule
Creating an effective project schedule is crucial for keeping a project on track, within budget, and aligned with its objectives. This involves identifying tasks, organizing them in sequence, estimating required effort, and setting milestones. By considering task dependencies, project managers can prevent bottlenecks and ensure efficient workflow and resource utilization.
Components of a Schedule Management Plan
A project management plan, often referred to simply as the project plan, addresses how tasks and resources will be planned, executed, monitored, and controlled. The initial project management plan is referred to as the baseline schedule and plan. A baseline is a fixed schedule that represents the standard used to measure the performance of a project.
In project management, there are three baselines—schedule baseline, cost baseline, and scope baseline. The combination of all three baselines is often referred to as the performance measurement baseline. These baselines align with the project management triangle.
Different Types of Baselines
- Cost Baseline
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The approved version of the time-phased project budget, excluding any management reserves, which can be changed only through formal change control procedures and is used as a basis for comparison to actual results.
- Schedule Baseline
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The approved version of a schedule model that can be changed using formal change control procedures and is used as the basis for comparison to actual results.
- Scope Baseline
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The approved version of a scope statement, work breakdown structure (WBS), and its associated WBS dictionary that can be changed using formal change control procedures and is used as a basis for comparison to actual results.
This lesson module focuses on the schedule knowledge area in the plan phase.
A schedule management plan includes the following information components (Donahue, 2024, p. 104):
- activities list and attributes,
- resource list and calendar,
- activity duration estimates,
- project scope statement,
- constraints and risk assessment, and
- project staff selection and assignments.
Knowledge Areas During Planning
The plan phase involves two key knowledge areas, integration and schedule, as illustrated in Figure 3.2.
Discover More
The following three videos cover the topics that help you
- build a project schedule (Video 1),
- sequence project tasks and activities (Video 2), and
- determine effort for tasks (Video 3).
Select each of the following video titles to read its description and play the video.
Video 1: What Is Project Scheduling?
This video defines project scheduling and provides an overview of the steps in creating a schedule.
Video 2: Sequence Activities Demonstration
This video demonstrates how to sequence the activities of a WBS backward.
Video 3: What Is Level of Effort
This video explains the importance of taking the level of effort into the consideration to complete the project.
Reference
Donahue, W. (2024). Project mastery: Bridging processes, people, and resources—A competency-based guidebook focused on technical project management, leadership, and business management. Centrestar Learning.