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Projects are a way of life for growing organizations, and creating sensible timelines is a vital skill that can be learned with practice and sound knowledge of the company resources. Begin the process with the mindset of a researcher, studying the requirements of the project with an open mind. Once the timeline has been established, though, prepare to play a tougher role as many people could undermine your timeline with excuses and attempts at procrastination.
Step 1
Conduct a thorough study of the proposed project so that you understand exactly what is required to be done as well as how it is expected to be achieved. The more detailed your study, the more accurate your timeline. If there is a necessary launch date, plan to work backward to set intermediate deadlines. For example, if your company wants to launch a new product in time for a specific season, customers might need to be able to order and take delivery by a certain date. It is usually preferable to identify necessary activities, estimate their time, and create an achievable launch date in that manner.
Step 2
Meet with employees assigned to the project. These employees will give you their perspective on the time it will take for the work to be done. Ask about any obstacles they anticipate before sharing your tentative schedule. Also ask them to provide “worst-case” estimates for their submissions. Be clear that this is the time to make their time requirements known because once the official project timeline is published, you expect it to be met.
TIP: Meet with employees assigned to the project to get their understanding of the work that must be done.
Step 3
Review the employees’ estimates and challenge their assumptions (in a professional manner, of course). There will be times that employees are dependent on others people’s deliverables to complete their own work. People also tend to be overly optimistic in terms of judging time. Make sure the project employees factor in their other projects, any vacation time and any other circumstance that might interfere with the project. With that said, also tell them that their feedback will be taken into account but the project may still require tighter deadlines to ensure that it is completed on time.
This is the opportunity to stress the project mindset and the rationale behind the final deadline. Listen carefully for any “should” statements and ask for clarification on them immediately. If an employee says they “should” be able to complete a task by a certain date, ask for the date they “will” have that task completed.
Step 4
With the groundwork from the earlier three steps, create scheduling deadlines along the full project timeline. Take into account the employees’ estimates and other business information collected, but do not be afraid to impose earlier deadlines. Some project managers routinely move up every deadline by at least one day to provide room for unforeseen circumstances. Remember that it ultimately is up to you as the project manager to ensure that the project is completed on time and on budget.
Step 5
Show your full project timeline to your supervisor, another project manager or a senior executive who is familiar with the project. Just as you challenged those who gave you feedback, ask this person to challenge your deadlines. If there is any doubt, make the deadlines earlier. There are rarely serious repercussions to a project finishing ahead of schedule but there can be for projects that run past the scheduled end date.
Step 6
Share the full project timeline to all stakeholders and project team members. There may be some pushback to deadlines but encourage positive dialogue around what can be accomplished; poor morale at the start of the project can be harmful to achieving objectives. It is sometimes worthwhile to include celebratory events in the timeline – i.e. pizza lunch at the end of key deliverables.
TIP: This information helps you choose which project activities to monitor and how often to monitor them.
How to Develop Your Project’s Schedule
Project management involves more than simply creating and maintaining your project’s schedule. However, developing a project schedule gives you the greatest chance of meeting project expectations with the least amount of risk.
After the project’s activities are specified, take the following steps to develop an initial project schedule:
- Identify immediate predecessors for all activities. This creates a natural structure for the network diagram.
- Determine all personnel and non-personnel resources required for the identified activities. The type, amount, and availability of resources affect how long you need to perform each activity.
- Estimate durations for all activities.
- Identify all intermediate and final dates that must be met.
- Identify all activities or milestones outside your project that may affect your project’s activities.
After you identify these external activities and milestones, set up appropriate dependencies between them and your project’s activities and milestones.
- Draw your network diagram. Use the network diagram to determine what schedules your project can achieve.
- Analyze your project’s network diagram to identity all critical paths and their lengths. Also identify the slack times of noncritical paths.
This information helps you recognize which project activities need to be monitored and how often to monitor them. It also suggests strategies for getting back on track unexpected schedule delays appear.
If the completion date is acceptable to the project sponsor, consider scheduling complete. However, if the project sponsor needs changes, steps of your analysis may have to be repeated.