Likewise, a professional project schedule is a roadmap of tasks to be accomplished during the project’s course to reach the finish line. It is a well-structured document that enables project managers to communicate all the necessary information to the stakeholders and the workforce with utmost transparency.
Full Answer
Project scheduling is important because it is an integral part of the project planning process. A project can not run without a project plan. Scheduling establishes the timelines, delivery and availability of project resources, whether they be personnel, inventory or capital.
What Is the Importance of Project Scheduling & Its Role in Business Projects? How Can Project Management Information Systems (PMIS) Give an Organization a Competitive Advantage? To organize and complete your projects in a timely, quality and financially responsible manner, you need to schedule projects carefully.
A project schedule identifies deadlines and interdependent tasks and assigns dates to required resources. As such, a schedule is an important tool for completing projects on time and budget. The Purpose of Project Schedules
It can therefore be seen that accurate project scheduling is half of the challenge of project management. Putting lots of time into getting the tasks clearly laid out and the schedule well thought through and well developed will increase the chances of success further down the line.
A project schedule identifies deadlines and interdependent tasks and assigns dates to required resources. As such, a schedule is an important tool for completing projects on time and budget.
The schedule places these tasks into a sequence of linked events with dates and, in some cases, the times for each to be started and finished.
Resources can include people, equipment and tools, and locations. If equipment arrives late, people are scheduled for other projects, someone forgets necessary tools or a room you need to access is locked, the schedule is delayed and this could jeopardize the project. Resources should be scheduled into the project along with tasks.
Project management software or project scheduling software is, by far, the best way to keep track of projects. Calendars and spreadsheets aren't much better than using paper and pen simply because they lack important features. The software you choose should:
There are numerous project management and project scheduling apps available in a range of prices. Most of them also offer free trials, including: 1 Forecast 2 Celoxis 3 Hive 4 ProjectManager.com 5 monday.com 6 Mavenlink 7 Workfront 8 Microsoft Project Online 9 Wrike 10 Asana
Resources should be scheduled into the project along with tasks. This not only ensures that the resources will be available when needed, but it can also reduce costs by ensuring that resources aren't reserved for the project until they're needed. For example, if you have to rent equipment for the project, you can schedule tasks ...
The time management and work schedule using the project management software helps in identifying the key steps that are involved in creating a project schedule. But for the efficient use of the software, it is essential to identify tasks, resources, dependencies, and durations.
The software is beneficial in many ways and helps the project manager to keep track of every single information of the project. Some of the major benefits of the work schedule using the project management software are:
The project schedule should reflect all of the work associated with delivering the project on time. Without a full and complete schedule, the project manager will be unable to communicate the complete effort, in terms of cost and resources, necessary to deliver the project.
The expectation is that each task will have a single owner and the owner is expected to manage and report on the work necessary to deliver the task. In Project Insight, this is called the 'task owner.'.
The building blocks of a schedule start with a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The WBS is a hierarchical reflection of all the work in the project in terms of deliverables. In order to produce these deliverables, work must be performed.
Project scheduling ensures one task gets completed in a quality manner before the next task in the process begins. By assuring that quality measures meet expectations at every step of the way, you ensure that managers and team members address problems as they arise and don't wait until the end. No major issues should appear upon completion because you’ve established quality controls from the very beginning of the scheduling process. Effective project managers understand that ensuring quality control involves managing risks and exploiting opportunities to speed up the schedule when possible to beat the competition and achieve or maintain a competitive edge with a more reliable product.
Effective project scheduling plays a crucial role in ensuring project success.
This is particularly true when resources must have highly specialized skills and knowledge in order to complete a task or when costly materials are required. Completing a project in a short time frame typically costs more because additional resources or expedited materials are needed. With accurate project scheduling, realistic estimates and accurate projections prevent last-minute orders that drive up costs.
They use project scheduling meetings to check in with their team members and prevent costly misunderstandings. These regular meetings ensure that work flows from one process to the next and that each team member knows that he needs to do to contribute the project’s overall success.
Creating a comprehensive work breakdown structure allows you to create a chart, such as a Gantt chart, that lists the project tasks, shows dependencies and defines milestones. Management consultant Henry Gantt designed this type of chart to show a graphic schedule of planned work. Its role in business projects is to record and report progress toward project completion. Your project schedule also allows you to assign human resources to the work and evaluate their allocation to ensure you have the appropriate levels of utilization. You may also develop a program evaluation and review technique chart, or PERT chart, to help you analyze project tasks.
Project scheduling is also a great way of securing stakeholder approval, and improving the stakeholders’ perception of the project. When you have a document you can point stakeholders to (top management and your clients included), they can easily see that the project is progressing as planned.
A project schedule also tracks task dependencies and progress, so the best project schedule examples often contain interactive elements and real-time updates with the help of project scheduling tools.
When you’re creating a CPM project schedule, you’re actually sequencing tasks in a way that gets the project completed in the shortest time possible by establishing the most important tasks. You can also include less important tasks and prioritize work accordingly.
If you’ve created an accurate, realistic schedule, you and your project team will be able to complete the project without a hitch. When you adhere to a project schedule, you can easily see if there are any risks or obstacles.
Again, you can use your historical data or estimates from your project team. CPM is incredibly beneficial to smaller teams handling multiple projects at once, or working on complex projects. However, it’s an asset to any project manager that wants to create a viable project schedule.