Creating a Project Schedule That Doesn't Keep You Up at Night
Creating a solid project schedule is a fundamental skill for experienced and “accidental” project managers alike. Whether you’re creating your first project schedule or your 100th, the following best practices should be kept in mind so that you can feel confident that there is a high level of success that your schedule can be met. By following these best practices, you can avoid sleepless nights due to the stress of a crazy project gone awry due to poor planning.
The Fundamentals
Though there are various project management approaches (waterfall/predictive, agile, or a hybrid of the two), these tips are primarily focused on the waterfall approach. Per the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBoK) Seventh Edition, a waterfall or predictive approach is “useful when the project and product requirements can be defined, collected, and analyzed at the start of the project…. This development approach allows the project team to reduce the level of uncertainty early in the project and do much of the planning up front.” The following steps are outlined for schedule development in the PMBoK:
Step 1: Decompose the project scope into specific activities.
Step 2: Sequence related activities.
Step 3: Estimate the effort, duration, people, and physical resources required to complete the activities.
Step 4: Allocate people and resources to the activities based on availability.
Step 5: Adjust the sequence, estimates, and resources until an agreed-upon schedule is achieved.
Important Considerations as You Develop Your Project Schedule
Don’t work in a vacuum – A project manager should not create a project schedule on their own and in a vacuum. Though you may have a good idea of the project scope and effort required, it is key that those doing the work participate in estimating the effort required and building the schedule. A work breakdown structure (WBS) should be crafted with knowledgeable project team members.
Understand the non-negotiables – It’s likely that when your project sponsor brought you onto the project, there was a desired project completion date “given” to you. Ask questions. Learn if this is a “nice to have by” date or if there are hard deadlines that impact your project or are impacted by your project.
Take a balanced approach – As you develop your project schedule and your team members estimate the time it should take to complete individual tasks, be sure you give yourself and your team some wiggle room for “real life”. Schedule development is both an art and a science. You don’t want to overestimate the required efforts and unnecessarily delay the project, but by no means should you and your team estimate that each task will be done with best case, expedited timing.
Discuss task dependencies – As you work with your project team to determine the effort entailed for your project, consider and discuss the dependencies between various tasks within the project. Also keep in mind that there are dependencies outside of the project that should be considered as well. Are there deliverables from other projects that are required for your project to move forward? Are your project team members supporting other projects with deadlines that may pull your key resources away at critical times? These are considerations to keep in mind as you craft a project schedule that you and the team are committing to.
Validate the schedule draft with the team – After you’ve pulled together all of the information from your project team regarding the required tasks to complete the work, the estimated task duration and dependencies, you are armed with the information needed to create an initial project schedule draft. Before you consider this schedule “final” and ready to be baselined, validate, validate, validate. Have your team members review the schedule draft and agree that this looks reasonable and achievable. Get the buy-in from those doing the work.
A Few Additional Tips:
As PM you don't have to be an expert in all areas (e.g.- development, QA, etc.), but you do need to understand enough and have the confidence to ask questions to team members as you're developing the project schedule.
Project completion dates are not set by your project sponsor. Your leadership can tell you the desired project completion date and your hard deadlines, but your job is to work with the team to craft a project schedule that is realistic. If the team cannot realistically meet ALL of the requirements by the desired completion date, your job is to communicate options. You can figure out and communicate to leadership: (1) what you CAN get done by the date requested (perhaps only a pilot, but not full rollout), (2) the date the existing team can realistically complete the project (perhaps 2 months later than desired), (3) any alternative solutions you can think of (Would having additional or different resources help meet the target date? Can the team take a different approach?).
Build trust up front - Being open and honest is important. Don't tell your leadership that a deadline can be met when you know it is not realistic. Doing so merely causes stress for the team and leads to a lack of confidence in your leadership ability.
Discuss project risks early – Project risks should be discussed during both project planning and execution. Project risks can impact many factors – including the project schedule. Do not wait until too far into the project to discuss risks. Once a risk is realized, it has become an issue that now has to be managed.
This list is not an all-inclusive list containing every best practice and consideration for project schedule development, but it’s a good self-check. If you’re interested in improving your project management and leadership capability through 1-on-1 coaching and mentoring, consider my Project Leadership Coaching program. See my coaching services page for details and feel free to contact me for a discovery call. If you’d simply like to continue following my insights on strategy and project management, follow me on LinkedIn and join my email list.