Companies are moving fast, which makes it that much harder for a PM to schedule projects properly, with decent precision, and most importantly, quickly. Let’s explore three simple approaches to project scheduling, taking into account the fast-paced environment.
Schedule Your Project
Even though avoiding scheduling by the book is less accurate, it still gives us a better starting point for communication and decision-making. Something is better than nothing. As a PM, you have a responsibility to spread positivity too; not losing your mind over not having a perfect schedule is one way to live up to this responsibility.
Rolling Wave Planning
The method of rolling waves is to plan imminent work first and consider distant work later. In short, we are simply optimising the planning capacity for the longer term.
Mastering the technique of rolling wave planning is challenging due to its higher demand for project structure knowledge.
This means that you know what level of planning you can get away with, what to postpone, and how to communicate your decisions to different stakeholders as you go.
A smart PM can implement this technique as soon as possible, saving considerable capacity for more thorough planning right after the first scheduling iteration.
Milestone Method
When something is too complex, break it down into smaller parts. Small parts are more manageable, and estimations are easier and more accurate. It is that simple.
This method is possible because establishing key milestones is always feasible. When there is no time to analyze the intricacies of the project, sometimes all you really need is a carrot on the stick.
The benefit of a milestone technique isn’t really a proper project schedule but rather having clear goals right from the very beginning and establishing a roadmap for the team.
Team Collaboration
I made the mistake of overestimating my estimating abilities many times. That would never have happened if I involved the team in the estimation process. You can never be experienced enough to have a better estimation than somebody who actually does the work.
Leverage your team's abilities and trust their judgment.
Investing project budget for an all-hands-on-deck meeting just to get the project estimation could be beneficial in the long run. Moreover, team involvement gives the team a heads-up on their work assignments, which is always good for team psychology.
Leverage your team's abilities and trust their judgment; the refinement of work estimation is always a possibility in the future. Use team collaboration as the collective effort to estimate your project.
A Few Considerations
Always Estimate Time Consumption
Try to always gather information about how much work in a specific activity can be done in one hour. This is all you need to calculate all estimations in man-days. Ask how much a specific person can get done for a specific task in one hour.
Implementing Reserves (Contingency, Management)
This is like a broken record, but always consider adequate reserves. There are two types of reserves at your disposal: the contingency reserve, which considers known project risks, and the management reserve, which is created to mitigate the impact of yet unknown risks.
Control Schedule with SERC
For controlling the project schedule, I usually use four simple details.
- Project start date
- Project end date
- Remaining project days
- Completed project tasks
The first three details are all you really need to estimate whether you are on time or not. The number of completed tasks can help you create useful ratios for better evaluation of the project progress and give more perspective on where you're at.
Avoid These Three Nonos
Don’t Know What Needs To be Done
This is kind of self-explanatory. When you decide to estimate some part of the project work, then you are committed to understand what the estimated part of the work consists of. Scope, whether partial or complete, is essential for scheduling itself.
Absence of Time Tracking
Tracking time is necessary for performance evaluation and, more importantly, for future projects too. If anything, do not focus on whether to track or not, but focus on how you can make it as easy as possible for your team to track time effortlessly and efficiently.
Falling for Planning Fallacy or Otherwise
Similarly to not knowing what needs to be done when estimating a part of project work, there is a risk of making wrong estimations based on planning fallacy. That means that our estimations are biased. If you have the possibility of an expert estimation or have some historical data, do use them.
Disclaimer
Scheduling a project with not enough time for it is risky - here are some PMI steps that you could (should) take to outline your project schedule properly. Hopefully, getting to know this structure helps you get more accurate schedules quicker.
- Plan schedule approach,
- Define concrete activities from the WBS,
- Sequence them,
- Estimate their time consumption,
- Finally, develop a project schedule.
Happy scheduling!