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Estimating work and managing schedules is a project management core competency. How can I create schedules that don't slip? What estimating techniques and tools are available? How do I create work-breakdown structures? How do I get commitments from team members that stick? I spend a day a week in my scheduling program - is this too much? Too little? What can I do early in a project to keep schedules on track later in the project? What is "critical chain" scheduling? Does it have any real-world benefits? Where can I find out more about it?
- Click here for Burning Questions and know-how on Scheduling and Estimating
- The Sooner you Start, the Later you Finish ... according to this article on one aspect of the philosophy and methods known as Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM). CCPM has some very interesting paradigms that may contradict some approaches to project management that we may take for granted - for instance, focusing on managing to eliminate project bottlenecks, rather than on hitting near-term milestones and managing task completion. This site has a number of comprehensive tutorial articles on topics such as Critical Chain and Risk Management, as well as a set of CCPM Frequently Asked Questions.
- If you want more on CCPM and TOC from the father of it all, see Avraham Goldratt's site at http://www.goldratt.com/, especially his articles page, which includes a number of case studies on how CCPM has been applied in different industries; and a new white paper explaining TOC Project Management.
- The Initiation Phase area of our Templates and Checklists has a number of templates and checklists for Scheduling and Estimating. Among the highlights is a six-template "Plan Development" series on scheduling:
- The WBS for Electromechanical Systems Project is a Task list/ Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) in Microsoft Project, from a multi-subsystem electomechanical development project, covering activities from the early planning phase through the end of the alpha and beta testing activities. Includes not only engineering activities for hardware and software design, prototyping, and integration, but also cross-functional activities such as user manual and training development. There are a number of custom views and filters coded to aid showing subsets of information - see the Views menu in Microsoft Project.
- Our Estimating Process and Methods template provides an overview of project estimating methods. Methods covered include Historical Data, decomposition, brainstorming, heuristics, Delphi, and more Using various estimating methods can help the project team come up with the best possible estimates.
- The MS Project Template for IT Software Development Project is an MS Project file created by the PMO for the IT organization of a large company, as a guideline for consistent planning of their software development projects. It provides a full cross-functional work breakdown for such a project, from business process requirements definition all the way through acceptance testing and deployment, with related work such as training and documentation as well. All WBS elements are linked to show typical dependency relationships and have generic departmental resoruces assigned. In addition, every task is annotated with notes on the purpose of that task and guidelines for executing it.
- The Software Project Plan template is a favorite of interviewee Barbara Zirolli of HP (see also our interview with her). It contains a wealth of guidance for creating a detailed software development plan. The template includes extensive detailed tools and guidance for sizing a complex software project in the early days, to enable intelligent tradeoff decisions based on scope of software development, resource availability, schedule flexibility and more. The sizing guidance includes a quality-minded focus on deciding what code reviews and inspections should be done, and ensuring that adequate staff time is planned for those critical activities. The entire template is annotated to explain what should be included in each section.
- Use our Scheduling Checklist during the planning and scheduling phase of your project. Contains items to ensure your schedule includes all project work, such as cross-functional activities, testing, and more. Read this checklist as you're starting your planning work, to be aware of the entire range of activities you should consider for your schedule. Reference it during the planning phase as necessary. Then be sure to check your schedule against it as you're nearing the end of planning. Make sure all items are covered so that your team commits to a full and accurate schedule.
- Check out Pete's Estimating Laws, a loosely bound set of Universal Laws that provides the project manager with amusing reminders of possible influences on and errors encountered when estimating work on a project. This template was written by a project manager who has been in the project "trenches" for longer than he cares to remember, working as a software developer, software group manager, and manager of project managers. He originially wrote down the laws to present to a group of neophyte project managers and technical leaders during a seminar, to deliver some "real world" flavor for this important piece of their new position - in a humourous manner - and spark discussion of this aspect of their jobs.
- If you're interested in "critical chain" scheduling, visit the Avraham Y. Goldratt Institute's web site; follow the link "TOC Applications" to Project Management.
- Doug DeCarlo discusses the mindset needed to manage projects in the face of unrelenting change in the archived column Is There A Madness to Your Method? (July 10, 2000)
- Our book list contains a number of references on Scheduling and Estimating.
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