Back To Basics – Project Planning – Project Delivery Schedule

Back To BProject Delivery Scheduleasics – Project Planning

You can jump to Project Planning | Project Scope | Project Delivery Schedule Planning | Resource Planning | Cost Planning | Quality Planning | Risk Planning | Communication Planning parts of this series.

Delivery Schedule Planning

Once project scope is determined and work breakdown structure (WBS) is created, the next step is to create project delivery schedule or timeline. For each of the deliverable work item identified in the work breakdown structure (WBS), project planner needs to identify list of activities need to perform.

Activities/Tasks

Activities as mentioned above, become a basis for estimation, scheduling, execution, and monitoring and controlling of the project work. For each of these activities he/she needs to figure out

• How long will it take to complete each activity (days, weeks)?
• What kind of resource(s) – required for its completion (skill set, experience, etc.)?
• What are task inter-dependencies & constraints (hard/soft) that need to be established?

Based on the estimate of efforts required to carry out each activity, one can sum up to get duration required for each deliverable. Thus working backward, project delivery timeline can be tweaked further to provide better estimates.

Milestones

A milestone marks a significant event in the project. Generally, project sponsors would refer to list of milestones to trace project delivery in respect of timeline & cost overrun.

Gantt chart

The visual representation of project delivery schedule can be viewed through a Gantt chart. Many portfolio managers & project sponsors find it easy to work with Gantt chart. Since referring the Gantt chart for a given project, project manager/ project planner & other stakeholder can optimize/ change the schedule further.

Generally, this is where project sponsors start pushing for aggressive project deadline which might have been indicated/ agreed earlier and sometimes it becomes a real problem. In such case, the reasonable way out is to consult the project sponsor team & provide the details of project schedule. If there are differences, highly detailed project schedule can help you out- to make your point. Based on the discussion, you may agree to following options:

1. Reschedule project delivery timeline [Time Implication]
2. Deploy additional resources [Resource Implication]
3. Change the scope of project [Scope Implication]
4. Enforce additional/ lesser Quality checks [Quality Implication]

As project team can manage timely completion of project activities based on project delivery schedule, it is quite imperative to perform detailed estimation work on project delivery schedule. To estimate delivery timeline, generally, it involves performing following processes.

Five steps to create project delivery schedule

Table 1: 5 steps to create project delivery schedule

These five steps will help us create project delivery schedule and it would become a baseline for a given project. The project schedule may change as project progress; this change can be attributed to change in scope, deliverables, quality and risk aspects of the project.

What do you think of this post? Let me know your feedback & comments.

You can jump to Project Planning | Project Scope | Delivery Schedule Planning | Resource Planning | Cost Planning | Quality Planning | Risk Planning | Communication Planning parts of this series.

About Zilicus

Zilicus offers the best project portfolio management tool ZilicusPM, with robust project management tools capabilities and easy ways to track project management KPI,

Know more about project portfolio management, Gantt chart, best project management tool, project management office, project management tips, project planning guide, project risk management, project scope management, effective project management, project manager guides and know more about Project Portfolio Management Software, Project Management Software Guide.