Project Scheduling

What is it?

In project management, the process of scheduling involves listing all the activities, deliverables and milestones that are part of a project (Wrike, 2021). Also included in a project schedule are planned start and finish dates, the duration of the project and any resources that are assigned to each activity. In order to be successful when it comes to your time management, project scheduling needs to be done correctly.

How is it done?

The three main types of schedules are as follows:

1. Master project schedule: this is a simplified list that details all the tasks with timelines or a project calendar.

2. Milestone schedule or summary schedule: a schedule that tracks all the projects major milestones and key deliverables. However, it does not track every task required to complete the project.

3. A detailed project schedule: this schedule identifies and tracks every project activity, making it the most thorough project schedule. This type of schedule is best used for projects that are complex, large or lengthy as it will help keep track of everything.

A Gantt chart is the most common form of project schedule, with both milestone schedule and detailed project schedule being created using one (Wrike, 2021).

Benefits of Project Scheduling

Project scheduling allows you to centralize all the data and information regarding your project in one place, rather than having all details of the project all over the place and disorganized (Mansinghka, 2021).

Project scheduling brings together all the project-related information in one place, allowing for clear communication between the project manager and stake holders. Task prioritization is also another benefit of project scheduling. The very first steps that are involved in scheduling comprise of the formation of a work breakdown structure and dividing the project into simpler tasks. After this has been completed, the appropriate techniques are then enlisted to evaluate the criticality of the tasks and arrange them in order of precedence (Mansinghka, 2021).

Some other benefits of Project scheduling are:

- The manager’s ability to procure the right resources for the job.

- The use of real-time information of the projects progress, allowing managers to gauge the resource performance.

- The internal teams’ conflicts are minimized when the entire team, stakeholder and managers are all on the same page.

Above is a template of a project schedule from the website Vertex42 (https://www.vertex42.com/ExcelTemplates/project-schedule-template.html).

References

Mansinghka, A. (2021, May 28). What is Project Scheduling, and Why is it Important? Retrieved from Saviom: https://www.saviom.com/blog/what-is-project-scheduling-and-why-is-it-important/

Wrike. (2021, October 26). Project Management Guide. Retrieved from Wrike: https://www.wrike.com/project-management-guide/faq/what-is-scheduling-in-project-management/