After putting the project plan into place its time to schedule and get ready to execute. Scheduling might seem as an easy task to perform but it has the possibility to determine the overall success of the project. A team that has put a great schedule into place will have a great chance of finishing the project in due time with great quality.
When scheduling it’s important to take Time, Cost and Quality into consideration.
There are many benefits of scheduling, a good schedule;
- Assists with progress monitoring, filing, and communication.
- Ensures that team members are on the same page in terms of tasks, dependencies, and deadlines.
- Can be used to track progress and identify issues earlier
Project managers use different types of chart to visualize schedules, some of the charts that are most common in project management are:
Gant chart is a time line that visualize how the project will proceed in the project management process. It helps understand the interdependencies between tasks, and schedule the completion of each task.
Pert chart (Pert Diagram) is a project management tool for planning, organizing, and coordinating activities within a project. It enables project managers to see critical scheduling information including task dependencies and estimated task duration.
5 Comments
Brandon Kresge · March 9, 2021 at 10:51 am
Quality post with some great pictures. I really like how it is stated that they seem easy to make, but determine the success of the project. While making a picture like that does not seem difficult, there is a lot more planning and work than expected. It is also something the team has to refer back to often to see what was done, what is being worked on, and what is ahead. It also really helps break down what each group does while showing the big picture.
Sean Kinneer · March 9, 2021 at 2:56 pm
This is a good summary, Henok. I like how you highlighted Time, Cost, and Quality and provided the criteria for a good schedule. Project managers need to have a detailed schedule to help keep everyone on the same page throughout the process of project development. As you said, it helps monitor and record progress and also stimulates communication. Gantt and Pert charts help project managers with mapping out the whole process and providing all the necessary tasks along the way. I like how you provided an example of each with a picture. Scheduling appears much easier than it is in reality. Time needs to be spent building up a a good schedule. This is only done so to help the project manager and team achieve most to all their goals with very few setbacks, if any.
Trisha Badlu · March 9, 2021 at 3:36 pm
Good summarization Henok! The pictures do a great job in showing the differences between Gantt and PERT charts as well. Scheduling is extremely important when planning a project. Without a well-thought schedule, resources can be wasted and the entire project delivery can be delayed. Using Gantt charts are really good as a visualization that’s easy to understand by everyone, but PERT charts are better when the specific details of dependencies and the critical path are necessary. Knowing the critical path is extremely important because it tells you which tasks can be expedited to complete the project faster whereas expediting non-critical activities won’t help much since they have a non-zero slack time.
Connor Ellis · March 9, 2021 at 4:44 pm
Identifying issues earlier is really important when investors money is on the line. Getting a head start on possible future roadblocks is a great way of avoiding them all together. Without good scheduling, it’s as if you team is driving on a foggy night without fog lights on your car. After you toil over the possible future issues, those metaphorical fog lights come on and now your team won’t slam into a boulder in the road! Nice concise post Henok! All great information!
Griffin Nye · March 9, 2021 at 5:21 pm
Very clear and concise post, Henok! Scheduling for a project is extremely important and can greatly affect the success of the project, as you said. It is also a very difficult skill to master as well. Give yourself and/or your team too much time for a specific task or the overall project and you waste a lot of time and company resources, but give yourself and/or your team too little time and you could become backed up in the schedule, arrive at the deadline with an incomplete system, or find the developers did a rushed job of implementing a certain piece in order to adhere to the schedule. I very much enjoyed your descriptions of the GANTT and PERT charts, you did a good job at explaining the goals of each and the subtle differences that anyone new to the subject would be able to easily understand.