Create Schedule And Manage Projects

Enough With “Just Before Close”

Whether traveling, bachelor or master thesis or meetings: Schedules are part of everyday life. You are also particularly important in project management, because projects are rarely completed overnight, but are extensively designed and implemented. A project plan is often created for this purpose, which summarizes the individual elements of the project planning .

An important part of the conception is the schedule. But how is a sensible schedule created and what needs to be considered?

1. What Is The Schedule In The Project?

A schedule in project management lists all activities, tasks, dates and processes with the respective start and end times in a project. During planning, those involved in the project receive an overview of the duration of the individual projects and the duration of the entire project. The schedule thus plans the chronological sequence of a project and answers the question of when which project will take place.

When Is The Best Time To Start Planning?

A well-planned allocation of your time is of great importance for you, your employees and your project. Appropriate planning is not only good for the atmosphere in the team , but also convinces clients and stakeholders who approve the project.

It is best to create a schedule following the project structure plan (WBS) . This popular project management method specifies the work packages and tasks that need to be completed for the project and places them in a logical context.

Work out the upcoming tasks as precisely as possible :

• What is the priority ?
• Which intermediate steps (e.g. checklist items) have to be completed?
• What workload is the task expected to have?

After that, you can start asking the question “when?” to answer and plan the project schedule.

2. Assign Tasks And Deadlines

Then it’s literally time to do the planning: allocate appropriate deadlines to tasks based on the project phase . It is very important to always plan a buffer in case there are delays, for example due to employee fluctuation, illness or delivery bottlenecks.

You can also use the WBS to classify them by sorting the respective work packages according to phases . However, since this method can only develop all its strengths with thematic (and not with temporal) connections, the use of a Gantt chart is recommended instead.

3. Allocate Resources Better And Take Experience Into Account

Allocation Of Resources

Proper time management is essential for projects, especially as the scale increases. If projects are delayed too much, the costs increase. The following applies here: “Time is money” . The dissatisfaction of the employees and the client also increases. But even a project that is planned too tightly runs the risk of failing if deadlines are not met.

So, with a good schedule, you can better manage your resources and complete the project reliably. You always have an overview of progress, deadlines and milestones and can react better to unexpected developments.

Take Experiences Into Account

When creating a project schedule, you should use the Lessons Learned method and incorporate experiences from previous projects. This allows you to better assess which tasks are particularly tedious and plan them with enough space.

Based on your lessons learned, you can also save your planning for future projects as a project plan template . So if you regularly work with similar projects or structures, you can reuse the saved templates at any time, add new experiences and thus continue to optimize them . This makes your planning more precise and efficient with each project.

4. Create Schedule With Software

Nowadays, schedules can be created and managed quickly and easily using software. Despite many templates available on the Internet, Excel or Word is not suitable as software for project planning , but rather only for fixed processes such as timetables.

Complex projects can change and require adjustments that Excel can only cover with difficulty or not at all with home resources. But there is suitable PM software for this, such as the Bochum tool factro . With it you can easily create a schedule or schedule template and customize it if you wish. As a result, the application is also suitable for operative business as management software .

Also Read: Management And Development Of Human Talent In An Organization