6 Project Schedule Management
by Nate Brummer | May 19, 2021
6 Project Schedule Management
Project Schedule Management includes the processes required to manage the project schedule. This knowledge area is concerned with developing the schedule management plan and the schedule baseline. The schedule management plan establishes the criteria and activities for developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule. The schedule baseline is composed of logically sequenced activities, resource estimates, duration estimates, and derived probability distributions for project durations. Once the schedule baseline is approved, changes to it should only be made through approved change requests.
Processes of Plan Schedule Management
6.0 Project Schedule Mgt.
Tailoring Considerations
How a project life cycle is intended to be executed will have a significant impact on the defined approach for schedule management. Other considerations for tailoring are resource availability, project dimensions, and technology support.
6.0 Project Schedule Mgt.
Agile Considerations and Emerging Practices
Adaptive planning defines a plan, but recognizes that priorities and requirements will change, and the plan must reflect the need to be adaptable and receive iterative changes. The following two key emerging practices facilitate adaptive scheduling methods:
- Iterative scheduling with a backlog is a form of rolling-wave planning based on adaptive life cycles. Requirements are defined and prioritized before execution and then developed using time-boxed periods of work. This approach is effective when multiple teams can work concurrently on a large number of features with interconnected dependencies. This not only enables but also encourages changes throughout the development life cycle.
- On-demand scheduling is used in a Kanban system and is based on the theory-of-constraints and pull production scheduling. It limits a team’s work in progress (WIP) by balancing demand with the team delivery throughput. On-demand scheduling does not rely on a schedule, but rather pulls work from a backlog as resources are available. It is often used in projects that have operational environments where tasks may be relatively similar in size and scope or can be bundled by size and scope.
Using agile approaches creates shorter development cycles with reviews and adaptations before initiating the next cycle. This allows for rapid feedback and the ability to incorporate changes for future development cycles. Despite the reality that the project manager’s role does not change given the project approach, the project manager should be familiar with such techniques in order to apply these adaptive principles effectively.