Chapter 4: Schedule Planning

Overview

THE COMPTIA PROJECT+ EXAM TOPICS COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER INCLUDE:

• 2.12 Given a project scenario with many phases and activities, set milestones and measurable targets for completion.

• 2.13 Given a set of specific milestones and their descriptions, specify entry and exit criteria for each.

• 2.15 Demonstrate the ability to create an activity time estimate (in units of time).

• 2.17 Identify and list the components needed to generate a workable project schedule.

2.18 Given a scenario with necessary project documents, and given enterprise holiday and individual calendars, demonstrate the ability to develop a project schedule by doing various project- related tasks .

Once you have an approved scope statement, wouldn't it be great if you could just tell the client and the rest of the stakeholders that your team will complete the project as quickly as possible, but you don't know how long that will be? Everyone dreams of having a job with no deadlines, but without them, we have no measurements for when products and services will be released to the public. Revenue projections are based on when a product or service can be purchased, department heads need to staff for new systems, and functional managers need to know how long you need their staff as resources for your project. These are just a few of the reasons a project manager needs to develop a schedule before the actual project work starts.

Most of you are probably familiar with project schedules; you may have provided input to the development of a schedule or seen copies of schedules produced from a project management software package. At first glance, it would seem that a putting together a schedule is a pretty basic activity. The schedule documents the planned start and finish of all of the tasks included in the project. All you need to do is enter the work packages from the WBS into Microsoft Project, and you have the schedule. It can't be that big a deal; how much planning can this take? As you have probably guessed, the answer is that a good project schedule takes a lot of planning. Just think about everything you need to know to produce a schedule. All of the tasks must be identified; the tasks must be sequenced in the order they can be completed; each task must be assigned an estimated length of time to complete; and finally all of this data must be organized to come up with the overall project schedule.

The project schedule will be part of the project manager's daily routine until the project is completed. Progress is reported against the schedule and status updates are provided to the stakeholders on a regular basis. If the project manager doesn't take the time up front to do schedule planning, he or she will be spending a lot of time during project execution making changes to the schedule and explaining why deliverables are not being completed as anticipated.

Now that you understand how important the schedule is, let's take a closer look at each of the components of schedule planning.