If you don’t use excellent resource scheduling software better take a look for scheduling techniques. Scheduling techniques help to align the project timeline, the scope, and your resources. A schedule has to fit a specified timeframe and use available resources with the right skills.
What will you get with this article:
Clearly defined role and importance of project scheduling in project management
View into different project scheduling techniques
How to solve your project scheduling problems using those scheduling techniques
The role of project planning and resource management software in project management
As many know – project schedule management and project scheduling techniques belong to the same family. In both – generally speaking – delivering a project or its part on expected time is the fundamental motive that both disciplines emerged.
Given many uncertainties, variables, and the possibility that resource availability or project scope may change, it’s hard to create a schedule that will last. And after all, it is you who’s going to be held accountable. Here’s how and when to use scheduling techniques applicable for IT complex projects, so you can prepare a reliable agenda.
A project scheduling is a process of creating your project’s timetable, consisting of sequenced activities and milestones that have to be delivered under a given deadline. The project schedule is created based on the following factors:
Project requirements
Project goals and deliverables
Tasks and their dependencies
Project Timeline
Team skills and competencies
Budget
Risk analysis
Project scheduling techniques are simply models of work schedules. Because project scheduling has many components, it requires a different approach depending on expectations or difficulties in the project, for example not enough time, not enough people, insufficient technology, etc.
A schedule is your project’s timetable, consisting of sequenced activities and milestones that have to be delivered under a given deadline.
Having a project plan you know exactly what should be delivered in what order. Project resource allocation helps you find and assign the right employees. An Instagram promotion can be an effective way to reach a wider audience, engage with potential customers, and build brand awareness. Then, a schedule tells you exactly when all of that should happen.
Guiding the project team through the execution phase and fostering collaboration across the entire project team are crucial for maintaining the schedule. With the right scheduling techniques, you can also adjust some activities and tasks in case of a project runs late or if any changes to the scope occur.
The first two techniques used by project managers are the Critical Path Method (CPM) and Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT). Both are based on mathematical logic. You can use these methods to calculate the assumed start and finish dates, based on the known scope of the project.
Let’s take a look at the CPM, first. Think of the critical path as your project’s tree diagram. The Critical Path Method helps you uncover the longest possible timeline for the project, as well as the shortest one. With the CPM you’ll also be able to mark critical tasks and the ones that may float. Changes in the latter’s delivery won’t affect the schedule.
To use the CPM, you need to know your project’s scope and list all of the tasks necessary for its completion. Next, estimate how long each task may take. After that, you should also note all dependencies between the tasks. This way you know which ones can be done separately, and which ones require previous tasks to be completed. Lastly, add milestones and deliverables to your project.
A project’s critical path helps to visualize the project flow and calculate its duration when all dependencies and deliverables are known. The critical path is defined as the group of tasks essential to the project’s success and is put in sequential order. This technique may not be so handy if there are many uncertainties in the project.
Similar to a critical path, PERT is a way to visualize project tasks’ flow in the project and estimate the timeline based on their assumed duration. This technique also illustrates dependencies between tasks.
To schedule a project using PERT, just like in CPM you will need to define tasks and their order first, based on your project’s milestones. Using a network framework similar to CPM, consisting of these tasks, you can estimate different timelines for a project depending on the level of confidence:
Optimistic timing
Most-likely timing
Pessimistic timing
Although it looks very similar to CPM, PERT uses weighted average duration rather than estimates to calculate possible timeframes.
A disadvantage of this approach is also a need to know ale the tasks and task dependencies between them in order to fully benefit from this technique.
Duration compression is a way to shorten a schedule. It may be of use if the project is going late and you have to find a way to adjust a schedule without changing the scope of the project. There are two techniques that you may apply: fast tracking and crashing.
As you already know what a critical path is, here’s another way to use it. Fast-tracking helps you to find tasks that could be done simultaneously or partially overlapped to speed up the project’s delivery. For that, take a look at the critical path to decide which activities could be fast-tracked.
Say you’ve started a new project and have already gathered all requirements. At this point, you could start with the design phase and only start with software development if the design is ready.
But if you need to fast-track both processes, you can start software development after first, the most important designs are ready. Then, continue to prepare later views while programmers implement materials they’ve already received.
Fast-tracking is an example of a project scheduling technique. Although fast-tracking may seem appealing, remember the risks, too. As you will have to manage several important activities at once, it’s easier to make costly mistakes or sacrifice quality.
Another compression technique is crashing, which is about adding extra resources to finish the project on time. It is a tricky one though, as you need to have spare resources you can use.
Plus, not all tasks can be done faster by adding more team members. According to Brook’s Law, “adding more human resources to a late software project makes it later”, which is connected to the general law of diminishing returns. The reason for that is additional communication that is needed to introduce new team members to a project and limited divisibility of tasks.
Another way to use the crashing technique is to add time (e.g. paid overtime), but it has to still fit a deadline. The con of this approach is raising the cost of the project, though.
Crashing project scheduling method.
In the simulation scheduling technique, you use a different set of activities to calculate the possible duration of the project. It’s especially handy when there are many uncertainties and variables. Using simulation you can create a schedule based on assumptions, so you can use it even if you don’t know all of the actions or if the scope may change.
One of the models you can use is a Monte Carlo Simulation. It takes different assumptions and possible outcomes into account, resulting in a forecasted duration. The advantage of this approach is that it takes risks and uncertainties into account, so even if scope changes or additional tasks occur, you can adjust your work schedule.
Resource leveling is adjusting a schedule and resources to cut the time of delivery or to avoid under or overutilization of resources. You can use it to adjust a single activity in a project.
Adjust a schedule using resource leveling, divide or merge activities according to the resources’ availability, so there are no under or overutilized team members.
The use of this technique is vastly debated in the project management community, as it may increase the project’s cost and time. If you want to apply this technique, you should take its downsides of it into consideration.
The project resource scheduling tool helps you to identify and allocate desired resources within the project’s timeframe. These tools can also help you to forecast the schedule for a new project, as you have already lots of insights from previous ones.
Knowing how your team has performed in the past, what obstacles they have had to overcome and how they have done that is also very handy. Modern resource management software offers digital project managers access to a lot of data, including performance or utilization reports.
Utilization bar view [Source: Teamdeck – resource planning software with the resource and project scheduling feature]
Teamdeck is the perfect solution to the problems faced by project managers. The resource scheduling feature is ideal for assigning the right people to projects, based on their skills and availability. With time tracking, you can always see what your team is working on, whether they are working overtime or not enough.
You can also check which projects are unprofitable because they consume too much of your resources. Leave management is a way to control your company’s resources when employees are on leave. Custom reports, on the other hand, give you a complete overview of the strengths and weaknesses of your management so that you can optimize them.
Every change should start with a good diagnosis of the situation. You already know what a project schedule is and what project scheduling techniques every good project manager should know. We will now discuss the most common problems faced by project managers with resource scheduling and how project scheduling techniques will help solve them
Estimating how much time is needed for a project is a key responsibility of the project manager. If the deadline is too short – everyone will be working under pressure, the quality of the product may drop and the client will be unhappy with the delay. If the deadline is too long, your company may reject new projects because it will think it lacks resources. The client, too, may leave your organization and choose one that will complete the project in a shorter time. Of course, the ideal lies somewhere in the middle. But how to find it?
[Source: Teamdeck – resource management software with time tracking and project scheduling features]
Use your experience and estimate the time needed based on previous projects. Program Evaluation and Review Technique, which is one of the mathematical analyses of the project schedule we’ve written about, will work great here. Based on tasks and milestones, make an optimistic, most probable, and pessimistic scenario and evaluate what kind of situation you are facing. That way you’ll be prepared for anything!
Deadline exceeding is a huge problem for a project manager, as only 52% of projects are completed on schedule (Project Management Institute, 2018). Exceeding deadlines is often perceived as the clearest proof that the project manager lacks of organizational skills.
[Source: PMI’s Pulse of the Profession, 10th Global Project Management Survey]
Of course, this is not always the case. Sometimes contact with the client is difficult, there are not enough people or other resources, or the company is simply in the heat of the moment as projects are pouring in. Regardless of the reason, the project deadline exceeding is a big problem and should be avoided at all costs. Especially since there are several effective ways to reduce the number of such cases. And perfect project scheduling is one of them.
If you often miss the deadline, use the duration compression technique, specifically fast-tracking, to shorten the schedule by doing some tasks simultaneously or bypassing those that are not critical to the final result.
It’s the nightmare of today’s market – projects getting blocked due to a lack of specialists. Sometimes it is caused by the fact that the pace of company development is faster than the pace of recruiting new people. Other times resources are sufficient daily, but when there is an accumulation of projects, there are simply not enough hands to work. It’s very difficult to keep up with the deals when there is no one to do the work and the deadline approaches inevitably. If you often face this problem in your work, crashing, one of the techniques of duration compression, will help you.
Offer your employees paid overtime or extra work, which they can take as days off at any time. It is also a good idea to use the support of a freelancer or outsourcing company, which will provide you with the necessary specialists to work on a demanding project.
As you probably know, a project doesn’t always fit into the initial scope from start to finish. Digital products are dynamic creatures that evolve with time. New needs appear, new ideas appear, the customer changes the assumptions and there is nothing left but to go with the flow of these changes and be agile.
Most project scheduling techniques are based on the knowledge of the project and the tasks needed, but if there are many unknowns in your work it is worth using simulation and creating several possible scenarios and action plans depending on the variables that may arise. This flexibility will ensure that you are ready for anything.
In project scheduling, the automatic response to a lack of resources is to acquire new resources. Sometimes it’s not possible, but we’ll tell you more – sometimes it’s not even necessary. Often the impression of not having enough resources is the result of not using them optimally. Look at this with a real-life example.
A day has 24 hours. This applies to everyone – you, Elon Musk, Oprah Winfrey, the President of the United States, and Queen Elizabeth. Everyone has the same amount of time – the only question is how they use it. If you feel that you lack time, you won’t extend your day, but you can get up earlier, watch two episodes of a TV series instead of 5, don’t scroll through Instagram, work intensively for a few hours, go for a bike ride, and then rest with a clear conscience after a productive day. And the same goes for your business.
If you are short of resources, check if you are using them optimally – maybe some employees get tasks below their competence, maybe they finish work early and the rest have nothing to do, maybe there are too few people in one department and too many in another. The resource leveling technique is ideal for optimizing your project schedule.
Yes, we know what you’re thinking. Is perfectionism bad? How can it be when everyone is always talking about how to achieve perfection, etc.? Well, of course, perfectionism is a great asset... as long as you have infinite time. In project management, unfortunately, time is the resource that is most often in short supply and perfectionism does not make things any easier.
If you want every element of the project to be done not only well but outstanding, you check everything dozens of times and do each thing methodically, one by one, until every piece of the puzzle fits perfectly – you most likely won’t make any deadlines as you’re late even before the start.
Does that mean that you should do your job poorly and release a flawed product? Absolutely not! However, you must understand that there is a happy medium between one approach and the other. This is where the Critical Path Method comes into play. Identify the tasks that are critical to making progress on the project and those that can be done later. With this trick, your project scheduling will allow you to complete the work on time and you will be able to improve the product in the remaining time.
You can prepare a project schedule anywhere – on a piece of paper, on a whiteboard, in Excel. You can. But what for. Today’s business is too advanced to allow for organizational chaos, which is why work management software is an indispensable element, allowing you to manage working time, resources, vacations, schedules, and calendars from one place. How to choose such a system tailored to your needs? This is a topic for a separate article. Fortunately, we have already prepared it for you Project Scheduling Software – What Are Project Managers Looking For or Project Schedule Management – The Role, The Challenges, and The Tools.
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