What is Project Scheduling?

Project scheduling is a foundational aspect of effective project management that involves creating a detailed plan outlining the sequence of tasks, their duration and the resources required to complete them. It plays an important role in ensuring the successful and timely completion of a project while maximising resource efficiency. A well-developed project schedule provides a roadmap for the project team, enabling them to coordinate their efforts, anticipate potential challenges and risks and make informed decisions to achieve project objectives.

In this article, we explore the elements of project scheduling, including its components and best practices for creating and managing project schedules.

Effective project scheduling helps reduce lead time, facilitate productivity and keep the project on track. By carefully planning and allocating resources, a project schedule ensures that tasks are completed efficiently, minimising delays and unnecessary downtime. This reduces lead time and maximises productivity, leading to successful project outcomes, especially for complex projects.

Additionally, project scheduling plays a significant role in cost reduction by effectively managing resources, time and budget allocation. It helps foresee potential problems in advance, allowing teams to proactively address issues before they escalate, ultimately saving time and money. Setting clear goals and timelines for the project team promotes efficiency and accountability, leading to better cost management and resource apportionment.

Moreover, the benefits of project scheduling extend to providing current progress updates and alerts, managing stakeholder expectations and ensuring accountability for tasks. This helps maintain transparency and communication within the project team and manage stakeholder involvement and expectations throughout the project lifecycle.

Project management terminology can often feel like a language of its own, filled with acronyms, jargon and technical terms that can be overwhelming for newcomers. However, understanding these terms is key to effectively managing and executing successful projects.

Critical Path and Critical Path Method

The critical path is the sequence of activities that determine the overall duration of a project. It is a series of tasks that must be completed in a specific order, with each task's completion time directly impacting the project timeline. The critical path method is a project management technique used to identify the critical path by analyzing the sequence of activities and their logical dependencies. This method helps project managers determine the minimum amount of time needed to complete a project and identify tasks that are crucial to the project's success.

Understanding the critical path is important because it allows project managers to focus their efforts on managing key activities that directly impact the project's timeline. By identifying the critical path, project managers can allocate resources and schedule tasks more effectively, ensuring that the project stays on track and is completed within the specified timeframe. This insight also helps identify potential areas of risk and allows for proactive management of potential delays or roadblocks. Understanding the critical path ultimately helps project managers optimise their efforts and resources to ensure successful project completion.

Dependencies and Milestones

Task dependencies help determine the timeline and workflow of a project, as seen in this example. For instance, before the roofers can commence, the walls need to be finalised. Similarly, before walls can be erected, the foundation must be in place. These task dependencies create milestones that dictate the sequence of tasks. In the context of building a structure, these milestones could include completing the design phase, building the foundation and completing the plumbing, electrical, construction, paving and landscaping. Each milestone sets the stage for the next phase of work, ensuring that the project progresses in a logical and efficient manner. By understanding and managing these dependencies, project managers can effectively plan and execute the workflow, ultimately impacting the overall success and timely delivery of the project.

Resource Allocation and Leveling

Resource allocation and leveling are key components of effective project scheduling. Resource allocation involves assigning staff, equipment, material and budget to specific tasks within a project, while resource leveling aims to ensure that the resources are used efficiently and evenly throughout the project timeline by comparing resource demand (allocations) to resource capacities (available resources by quantity and date).

To implement resource allocation and leveling effectively, first identify the specific needs of the project and the availability of resources. This involves understanding the skills and availability of staff, the availability and suitability of equipment and the allocation of budget for various project tasks. Once these factors are assessed, resources can be allocated and leveled to minimise bottlenecks, avoid overloading certain resources, and ensure a smooth flow of work throughout the project.

Efficient resource allocation is important to ensure that the project stays on schedule, maintains quality and stays within budget. Failure to do so can lead to delays, poor-quality work and cost overruns.

Project and resource scheduling software can significantly aid in the effective implementation of resource allocation and leveling. These tools can help project managers visualise resource availability, identify potential conflicts and optimise resource usage throughout the project timeline. By using such software, project managers can make informed decisions about resource allocation and leveling, ultimately leading to a more successful project.

Analyzing the entire project scope is required for the successful planning and execution of any project. It involves understanding the full extent of the project, including its objectives, requirements, limitations and deliverables. By thoroughly analyzing the project scope, project managers and teams can identify and prioritise key tasks, allocate resources efficiently, set clear expectations and mitigate potential risks.

A comprehensive analysis of the project scope also helps set realistic timelines, establish realistic budgets and ensure that all stakeholders are on the same page.

Creating the Work Breakdown Structure

The first step to understanding the project scope is to create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS).

Per the PMBoK, a WBS is "A deliverable-oriented grouping of project elements which organises and defines the total scope of the project. Each descending level represents an increasingly detailed definition of a project component. Project components may be products or services."

The purpose of the WBS is to communicate a clear definition and provide a good understanding of the project scope early in the project life cycle. It establishes a common definition for project scope and forms the basis for controlling project schedules and costs.

Establishing the Duration of the Entire Project

To establish the duration of the entire project, consider the project scope, goals and objectives. Begin by gathering insights from experienced individuals who can provide valuable input on the project's duration.

Historical data analysis can also be utilised to estimate the duration based on similar past projects. Parametric estimating involves using a statistical relationship between historical data and other variables to calculate the project duration. Bottom-up estimating breaks down the project into smaller tasks to estimate durations for each, which are then aggregated to determine the overall project duration. Reserve analysis involves including contingency reserves in the project schedule to account for uncertainties and unforeseen events.

By incorporating the project scope of work (SOW) and ensuring that the project duration aligns with the goals and objectives, the estimated project duration will accurately reflect the work to be completed. Choosing the most suitable technique for estimating project durations based on the project's unique characteristics is important to ensure a realistic and achievable timeline.

By considering the project scope, goals and objectives, the project team can establish a duration that supports the successful completion of the project.

Mapping Out the Project Activity Network Diagrams

To map out the project activity network diagrams, start by listing the WBS tasks in a sequence, representing the order in which they need to be completed. Identify task interdependencies by recognising which tasks are dependent on the completion of others. This will help in understanding the flow of work and the necessary order of tasks. One of the most common activity network visualisation tools is the Activity-on-node (AON) diagram.

Other common ways to visualise project schedules include Gantt charts, task lists and calendars. Gantt charts visually show the start and end dates of each task, task lists provide a straightforward list of tasks and their deadlines and calendars highlight important dates and deadlines for the project. Each visualisation method has advantages and can be used based on the project's requirements.

In this Deltek Open Plan screenshot, the critical path is visualised on the calendar and resource utilisation is summarised at the bottom.

Identifying Key Activities and Their Dependencies

The key activities in the project are usually referred to as Milestones and are typically phase gates or start and/or finish points to key scope in the project.

Dependencies will link through these key activities to enable summary-level reporting of the project schedule. For example, the planning phase depends on the research phase to gather necessary information and the design phase depends on the planning phase to outline the project scope. A completion milestone can be inserted between these phases to provide summary reporting and control of the overall project. This is especially desirable on larger project schedules to make it easier to detect schedule performance issues.

When successfully executing a project, creating a detailed plan for every task in the project schedule is an important factor. This involves breaking down the project into smaller, manageable tasks, establishing a timeline for each one and capturing the details using project scheduling tools. By doing this, project managers can identify potential obstacles, allocate resources effectively and let the project scheduling software keep everything organised.

Breaking Down Tasks Into Smaller Subtasks

It is essential to carefully list the subtasks required for each task to break down the project tasks into smaller, more manageable steps. This will help ensure that every detail is accounted for and included in the project schedule. For example, suppose one of the project tasks is to build a foundation. In that case, the subtasks may include design, determining the placement of columns and walls, installing drainage and waterproofing, excavation and building.

By utilising project scheduling software like Deltek Open Plan, the subtasks can be easily tracked and organised to keep the project on track and ensure its successful completion. This solution allows for creating detailed task lists, assigning team members to specific subtasks, setting deadlines and monitoring progress in real time. Ultimately, breaking down tasks into smaller subtasks is an important step in project management, as it helps to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks and that the project stays on schedule and within scope.

Assigning Resources to Each Task

When assigning resources to each task in the project schedule, it's important to consider the availability and costs of the resources. Start by identifying the necessary resources for each task, such as personnel, equipment and materials. Then, map the resource availability to each task to accurately plan the team's time and workload.

Consider the related costs for each resource and task to avoid going over budget. Ensure that the costs associated with each resource are balanced with the overall project budget. This may require prioritising tasks based on resource availability and costs.

By carefully mapping out the resource availability and costs for each task, you can ensure that every task in the project schedule has the necessary resources and that the project stays within budget. This will also help effectively allocate resources and manage the team's workload. Regularly monitor resource usage and costs to make adjustments as needed throughout the project.

Estimating Duration for Each Task

Estimating the duration for each task involves breaking down large tasks into smaller component tasks and using various techniques to calculate task durations. The first step is to involve team members in the estimation process to get expert opinions on task durations. Team members can provide valuable insights and expertise to ensure accurate estimations.

Next, historical data from your project scheduling software can be used to analyse how long similar tasks have taken in the past. This can provide a baseline for estimating the duration of the current task.

Reserve analysis can be used to account for any uncertainties or risks that may affect the duration of the task. By setting aside additional time as a buffer, the estimate can become more realistic.

A good quality schedule is critical to the success of a project and helps ensure that each task is completed on time and within budget. Schedule quality can be measured by evaluating quality metrics such as missing logic, logic density, critical activities, hard constraints, negative float and more.

Schedule quality changes over time as updates are processed, subcontractor schedules are integrated into master schedules and schedule changes are made. Changes need to be monitored in real time, as they could significantly impact project performance.

Good quality schedules support effective schedule risk management. Risk management, modeling and optimisation are more effective when schedule quality is sound.

Deltek PPM solutions provide world-class performance management, workflow, scheduling and risk management solutions to help you consistently deliver successful projects.

• Deltek Open Plan is a planning and scheduling solution with multi-project support, resource management, risk analysis and flexible reporting.
• Deltek Acumen analyses schedule and cost data, manages risk, accelerates schedules and is comprised of two modules:
  • Acumen Fuse provides advanced analytics to improve project quality, plans and execution.
  • Acumen Risk/360 reduces risk, improves the forecast and generates schedule scenarios to identify acceleration opportunities.