Processes of project time management are crucial elements in project management. Furthermore, those processes provide clear guidance and direction to achieve the project’s desired goals within the project’s triple constraints. So, in this article, we’ll explore six processes in project time management.
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What is time management in project management?
In the business world, they consider time as money. So, time management is a crucial aspect of project management because it can directly impact the project’s success or failure. Schedule (time) is one of the aspects of the project’s triple constraints. Read more: The project’s triple constraint in project management. As a project manager, you should have time management skills because any delay in the schedule can be very costly. Therefore, time management is crucial to ensure project success.
Time (schedule) management is the crucial process of defining project tasks and their durations, dependencies, and assigned resources that help the project managers complete the project within a designated time frame. Furthermore, it includes monitoring and reporting on the timeline to ensure the project is delivered on time. However, this will help reduce the overspending of your project. Typically, a project timeline is created during the planning phase and includes the following:
- A project schedule with start dates, end dates, and milestones
- The tasks are essential to complete the project deliverables
- The project costs, resources, and dependencies associated with each task
- All team members that are responsible for each project task or activity
As a project manager, you can use project scheduling software to create and track the project schedule. On the other hand, this software allows them to monitor the progress of tasks, resources, and costs in real time. Furthermore, they can assign tasks or activities, link dependent tasks, view the dashboard, allocate resources, and more.
In short, a project timeline provides a detailed plan that represents when and how the project will deliver the outcomes defined in the project scope and serves as a tool for communication, handling stakeholders’ expectations, and as a basis for performance reporting. The project team selects the appropriate schedule method, such as the agile or critical path method. Then, the project’s crucial elements, such as the tasks, planned dates, durations, resources (involved physical and human), dependencies, and constraints, are entered into a scheduling tool to create a model for the project. Then, the result is a project timeline.
06 processes of project time management
Project time management includes the processes that help project managers manage and complete the project timely without any delay. Project time management processes may involve planning schedule, defining activities, sequencing activities, estimating activity resources, estimating activity durations, developing project schedule, and controlling project schedule. So, let’s explore these processes one by one.
Plan Schedule Management
The plan schedule management process is crucial because that helps you establish the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project timeline. Furthermore, this process provides clear guidance and direction for managing the project schedule throughout the project.
In this process, project managers can use inputs (According to the PMBOK 6th edition) such as project charter, scope management plan, development approach, enterprise environmental factors (EEF), and organizational process assets (OPA) to plan project timeline. In addition to these inputs, you can use tools and techniques, such as expert judgment, data analysis, and meetings during this process.
So, with these inputs, tools and techniques, you can build a schedule management plan as the output of this process.
Define Activities
Defining the project activities is another vital process of project time management because this process helps project managers identify and document the specific actions to be performed to produce the project deliverables. Furthermore, this process decomposes work packages into timeline activities that provide a basis for estimating, timeline, executing, monitoring, and controlling project tasks or activities.
In this process, you can use inputs (According to the PMBOK 6th edition) such as a schedule management plan, scope baseline, EEP, and OPA to define project activities. In addition to these activities, you can use tools and techniques such as expert judgment, decomposition, meetings, and rolling wave planning.
So, with these inputs, tools and techniques, you can get the activity list, activity attributes, and milestone list as the outputs of this process.
Sequence Activities
Sequence activities are the process of project time management that helps you identify and document relationships among the project activities or tasks. Furthermore, this process defines the logical sequence of activities to obtain efficiency given all project constraints.
In this process, project managers can use inputs (According to the PMBOK 6th edition) such as schedule management plan, scope baseline, activity attributes, activity list, assumption log, milestone list, EEP, and OPA to sequence project activities. In addition to these activities, you can use tools and techniques such as the precedence diagramming method, leads and lags, dependency determination and integration, and project management information system.
So, with these inputs, tools and techniques, you can get the project schedule network diagram as an output of this process.
Estimate Activity Durations
In this process, you should estimate the work periods needed to complete project activities or tasks with estimated resources. So, this process provides the amount of time each activity will take to complete it.
Before estimating activity duration, it’s crucial to determine what resources will be needed to reach a project’s goals. Then, you can use these tools as inputs (According to the PMBOK 6th edition), such as resource breakdown structure, resource calendar, and resource requirements. After identifying project resources, you can estimate each activity duration needed to complete the project.
When estimating activity duration, you can use these tools and techniques, such as expert judgment, analogous estimating, parametric estimating, three-point estimating, bottom-up estimating, alternative analysis, reserve analysis, decision-making, and meetings. So, with these inputs, tools and techniques, you can get the duration estimates and basic of estimates as the output of this process.
Develop Project Schedule
Developing the project schedule is the process that helps you analyze activity or task sequences, durations, project resource requirements, and schedule constraints to create a timeline model for project execution, monitoring, and controlling. Furthermore, this process creates a schedule model with planned dates for completing project activities.
To develop an accurate project schedule, you can use these inputs (according to the PMBOK 6th edition), such as schedule management plan, scope baseline, activity attributes, activity list, assumption log, basic of estimates, duration estimates, lessons learned register, milestone list, resource calendar, agreements, risk register, resource requirements, project team assignments, and project schedule network diagram. In addition to these inputs, you can use these tools and techniques, such as schedule network analysis, critical path method, resource optimization, data analysis, leads and lags, schedule compression, project management information system, and agile releasing planning.
So, with these inputs, tools and techniques, you can get the schedule baseline and project schedule as the output of this process.
Control Project Schedule
In this process, you should monitor the project status to update the project timeline and manage changes to the schedule baseline. However, the schedule baseline is maintained throughout the project.
To control the project schedule, you can use these inputs (According to the PMBOK 6th edition), such as schedule management plan, schedule beeline, scope baseline, performance measurement baseline, lessons learned register, project calendars, project schedule, schedule data, resource calendars, and work performance data.
In addition to these inputs, you can use these tools and techniques, such as earned value analysis, iteration burndown chart, performance review, trend analysis, variance analysis, critical path method, project management information system (PMIS), leads and lags, and schedule compression, and resource optimization.
So, with these inputs, tools and techniques, you can get the work performance information, change requests, and schedule forecasts as outputs of this process.
Conclusion
Project timeline management is a crucial aspect of the project management. Planning schedule, defining activities, sequencing activities, estimating activity resources, estimating activity durations, developing schedule, and controlling project schedules are six processes in project time management. These processes play a vital role in achieving the project’s desired goals throughout the project life cycle.
