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In the module, we will review:
- Why you need a plan to manage your timelines.
- Main uses of
- Generally accepted good practices to manage timelines.
Why you need a plan to manage your timelines.
A timeline is a way of displaying a list of events in chronological order. It is also sometimes described as a project artifact. The timeline is typically a graphic design showing a long bar labelled with dates. Alongside that bar are events labelled sequentially showing where they would have happened in relation to one another. Timelines are generally done for the project as a whole, however a Project Managers might choose to create individual timelines to help their team members manage milestones specific to their own role.
TIP: As your project proceeds, be prepared to adopt the role of cheerleader, reminding your team of the importance of meeting deadlines.
Project management and timeline
In project management, a timeline is a listing of a project’s milestones, activities, and deliverables. There are almost always intended start and finish dates as well as estimations for resource allocation, budget and duration. Those resources, budgets and durations are all linked by dependencies and scheduled events. A timeline is commonly used in project planning and project portfolio management parts of project management. Elements on a schedule may be closely related to the Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) terminal elements, the Statement of work, or a Contract Data Requirements List.
Before a project schedule can be created, the person creating the schedule should have a work breakdown structure (WBS), an effort estimate for each task, and a resource list with availability for each resource. If these components for the schedule are not available, they can be created with a consensus-driven estimation method. Even with a consensus, it is important to remember that the schedule itself is an estimate: each date in the schedule is estimated. Should those dates not have the full buy-in of the people who are ultimately going to do the work, the schedule will be inaccurate.
The term “work breakdown structure” (WBS), as used in project management and systems engineering, is a deliverable oriented decomposition of a project into smaller components. The work breakdown structure could be applied to a product, a service, data, or any combination thereof. A WBS also provides a sound framework for detailed cost estimating and control as well as guidance for schedule development and control.