Time

Project to Stay on Track

Project time management is a critical process involving planning, estimating, scheduling, and monitoring the time it takes to complete a project. This phase includes identifying the necessary tasks, allocating resources, and determining the project timeline. During this phase, a Project Manager must consider factors impacting the project’s success, such as budget constraints, resource availability, and potential risks. The Project Manager also needs to estimate the time required to complete each task. This process involves breaking down each task into smaller, more manageable components and other considering factors. Accurate estimates are crucial for creating a realistic project timeline and avoiding delays or overruns.

The most important piece is to create a detailed project timeline that outlines each task’s start and end dates. This timeline may include milestones and deadlines to help keep the project on track. The Project Manager may use tools like Gantt charts and critical path analysis to help them visualize the project’s timeline and identify potential bottlenecks. Last but not least, the Project Manager must monitor the progress of each task, making necessary adjustments to the timeline to ensure that the project remains on track. They may also use project management applications to track progress, identify potential delays, and communicate with team members.

Key Activities

• Developing a timeline and breaking the project into smaller components through the work breakdown structure (WBS). Once the WBS is established, the activities involved can be defined and sequenced, and their durations estimated. This information is then used to identify the critical path timeline, which outlines the activities that must be completed on time to ensure the project’s success.
• Identifying, prioritizing, and executing activities. This can be achieved by developing a milestone list that helps track progress, an activity list that outlines the tasks to be completed, a product backlog that lists the features to be developed, and agile release plans that help in scheduling the delivery of these features.
• Ensuring that each deliverable is thoroughly checked and meets the required quality standards before delivering it to the customer. Once a task is completed on the project timeline, the Project Manager needs to provide the customer with detailed documentation, reports, and necessary materials to ensure they understand the deliverable entirely. The Project Manager needs to ensure timely and accurate delivery of all project deliverables to meet or exceed customer expectations.
• Initiating, planning, executing, monitoring, controlling, and closing the below deliverables.

Project Deliverables

Start Phase

This phase project management deliverables include a Project Methodology, WBS (work breakdown structure), WBS Dictionary, Product Backlog, Milestones List with Durations, Activities List with Durations, Project Schedule, Critical Path, and Agile Release Plans.

Work Phase

This phase project management deliverables include a Project Schedule with % progress, Baseline Schedule with variances, and a Critical Path Timeline.

Finish Phase

This phase project management deliverables include a 100% complete project plan.

Effective time management is critical for ensuring that projects are completed on time, under budget, and within scope. By carefully planning, estimating, scheduling, and monitoring the time it takes to complete a project, project managers can keep the project on track, avoid costly delays or overruns, and deliver a successful project meeting stakeholders’ expectation. Let’s move on to People.

Learn, Share, and Support

Subscribe to my newsletter to stay current on project management articles. Explore the website to learn more and schedule a consultation to discuss your goals as a current or future project manager. Also, don’t forget to share with others who could benefit from my content and consultations.

For more info, please contact me at MorenoConsultingInfo@gmail.com.

Let’s empower you for project management success!