Scheduling 101 for Aspiring Project Managers
If you’re in a meeting and scheduling terms are brought up, it can be intimidating. Project managers use loaded industry jargon that can add to the confusion. Although scheduling can range from simple to complex, it’s one of the most important core competencies a project manager needs to have. This guide serves as an introduction for project managers who are new to the industry, outlining key terms and concepts you’ll need to know about scheduling.
Why is scheduling so important?
Without a schedule, there wouldn’t be a project—just a long list of tasks with no deadline in sight and no strategy behind execution. You wouldn’t know what you’re chasing after or what “done” really means. What’s more, without a well-crafted schedule, you’re not able to optimize how long it will take to complete a project by running certain tasks in parallel. Everything would be a big guessing game, and while that could work on simple projects, it would make larger projects—with hundreds of people working on thousands of tasks—impossible.
While a project’s success is defined by both its schedule and its cost, success is more often valued for finishing on time. Investors are eager to see a project completed so they can reap the rewards of their investment. As the saying goes, time is money. As a project manager, it’s your job to guard this precious resource through impeccable scheduling savvy.
Key scheduling terms you need to know
Scope? Gantt charts? Critical path? If you’re feeling overwhelmed already, don’t worry—by the end of this article you’ll understand at a high level what all of this means.
To help explain these terms, I’m going to use an example based on a home improvement project.
Let’s say my friend Akeem is building a deck in his backyard because he wants to host a giant fourth of July party—with puppets, a petting zoo—the whole shebang. His schedule is pretty tight to make this happen since he decided to kick off the project on May 2. There’s only a few weeks to get all the tasks completed by July 4.
The first thing Akeem would need to do is create an overview of what the major steps are in the deck-building process and assign each task to an individual to complete:
1: Measure the space—Akeem
2: Pick design of deck (including material type)—Akeem
3. Get quotes, read reviews and select contractor—Akeem
4. Build Deck—Contractor Scope
5. Finish
What is scope?
You’ll notice the term “scope” in the list of tasks above. Your project scope is what you’re building, and it’s not always building things. Sometimes it’s brainstorming, coming up with a visualization board— but with whatever you’re creating, there’s got to be boundaries. You can’t build a deck that spans three city blocks, for example. Your scope defines those boundaries.
Usually, at the beginning of projects, scope is less clear. You might say, okay I’m building a deck. But as the project becomes more defined, you’ll narrow that down to the size of the deck, the type of wood and the design. Managing scope is another core competency a project manager needs to have, but we’ll get into that in a later article.
Schedule and scope are hand in hand. Once you figure out what your scope is, if you add on additional tasks, the project schedule gets longer. More work means more time to do something, which means an increase in man hours.
What is a Gantt chart?
Let’s say Akeem asks the contractor to give him a breakdown of the steps in the deck-building process. This is what the contractor puts together:
Contract Scope
Reconfirm Akeem’s measurements
Design deck and submit for approval
Buy material
Dig foundation pillars
Pour concrete on foundations
Install lower section of deck
Installing upper section
Install railings
Sand & coat
Check for any quality issues
This is a great overview, but it’s missing something—it doesn’t tell you how each activity impacts the other. This is where the Gantt chart comes in handy.
The Gantt chart is a tool that helps you see the dependencies and interdependencies between the major tasks in your project.
For something as simple as the deck project, the Gantt chart (which I’ve broken down below), has about 20 line items—all with start and end dates. You’ll notice that some tasks can be done in parallel with others, and this helps optimize the time it takes for your project to get done.
What is critical path?
Other tasks however, are critical in that they have little to no float. The Gantt chart allows you to see what those critical tasks are so you can come up with your critical path.
The critical path is the shortest route in the schedule to get the project completed. Recieving the deck materials would be a critical task for Akeem’s project because without those, nothing can be built. Another critical task item would be laying the foundation. You can’t begin work on the second level of the deck until that’s done, make sense?
There are other tasks that can be completed while all this is going on that don’t impact the length of the schedule. Let’s say while the contractor is digging foundation pillars, his assistant is cutting wood for the railing. That could be done alongside a later task if needed, without holding up the project.
What is float?
But what happens if Akeem’s contractor gets sick and can’t work for four days? If I didn’t build float into Akeem’s schedule, he would miss his deadline of getting the deck finished by July 4. So what is float, exactly?
Float is just a little more time allotted than what you think the job will take you and it’s a way to manage risk in your project.
If the contractor says it will take three days to lay the foundation for the deck, Akeem can add an extra two days for “float” and do the same thing with all the other tasks. That way, if something holds up the project, there’s cushion in the schedule.
The great thing about float is that it can be carried over from task to task, giving you a little bank of “float” time as the project progresses, protecting your schedule from unexpected issues that may arise.
I hope this article helps you better understand the basics of scheduling from a project management perspective. Have any questions? Ask me in the comments below or @theomarproject on Twitter.