A project manager leads the organizational work for a team or employees of the company. Their main job is to set the various tasks, assign them between employees, and check whether they complete them on time or not. Good project managers have the ability to organize things well and utilize special charts or lists to track every day’s happenings. 

In this article, we shed light on the basics of project management scheduling, why it is beneficial to use a ready-made schedule plan, different kinds of schedule plans, and many more! However, using a schedule plan helps you to finish your tasks on time and manage projects very well. 

What is project management scheduling?

Project scheduling is all about sorting and organizing the project things. It includes what needs to happen and when. Creating a step-by-step plan is one of the main tasks of project scheduling. These steps include various things like what the project delivers. What big moments along the way etc? On which date does the plan start and when end? How long is the time required to complete the project and who is responsible for getting it done? Good scheduling enables you to complete the project within the given period. Completing the project on time is super important for any team or business. 

Now the question is why does project scheduling matter? What are the effective ways to follow to keep your project moving smoothly? No matters you are new project managers or just want to improve your skills, following the below mentioned tips helps you deliver effective results everyday.  

5 benefits of scheduling in project management? 

One can not underestimate the importance of project scheduling. It is a fundamental skill that every project manager should have. Below we have listed the top 5 benefits of scheduling in project management. 

1. Resource management

To build your perfect team, you must have a clear idea of what work needs to be accomplished first. A scheduling mastermind might be able to help you build the perfect plan. When you are building your project schedule in your scheduling software, you might not have all of the people you are going to need yet. No worries! You can add the correct people as you learn more. Temporary “placeholder” roles are perfect to use to show what type of team members are lacking.

Your staff must consider who’s available and what must be accomplished using this information to fulfill the agenda. Your project calendars in your software enable you to customize staff availability so that everyone is ready when needed. This way, you create an exact, dynamic plan for your staff to succeed! These steps allow you to assign people to work and keep your project schedule on track.

2. Establish a project completing deadline

Project scheduling helps everyone to know their role in the completion process and when to end it effectively. It allows managers to assign specific tasks to every team member along with a certain time to finish their work. Using a ready-made project scheduling template makes everything easy and simple. You need to just fill in the details and you are all set. In this way, every team member remains on track and knows what the next steps‌ are. 

You can quickly analyze who is responsible for each task and when it should be done. This makes teamwork effective and prevents you from forgetting things. Having a clear schedule avoids confusion, and ensures that the project will be completed successfully. In addition, ready-made templates save time and make you smarter when completing the project. 

3. Risk management

When dealing with tough projects it’s important to stay aware of time because many things can go wrong! The vendor may not deliver on time, staffing levels may be less than expected, team members disagree on what to do, additional work is added midway into the project, or there are technology issues. All of these can lead to delays. 

To manage these risks, it’s a good idea to have a visible schedule that clearly outlines all the steps in your project, deadlines, people, and any tools you’ll be using. When the project schedule is easy to read and visible, it’s easier to see early warning signs of potential trouble – especially for your critical path jobs that you can’t afford to have delayed. This allows your team to react and prevent troubles For these reasons, tracking the timeline is crucial!

4. Simplify the project management process

As we all know ‌project leaders handle many complicated problems at the same time. They prefer to use the ready-made templates. In this way, managers can save time and effort also. With templates, they can smoothly spend more energy on important things. The process of project management becomes easy and simple. Furthermore, it also increases the team’s passion to complete projects on time and deliver effective results. One important factor is that templates make project life simple and stress-free!

5. Prioritization

A project plan allows everyone to better understand what they should do first. When everyone knows all that must be done, it is simple to decide what is most important. Then individuals can begin the most important work without wasting their time.

Project goals are simple to specify and relate to actual work. Even if you don’t number every task in sequence, those familiar with the project will understand what follows. Large tasks that require much effort are obvious, so they get done first, and small ones last.

Having everything out in the open means nothing gets forgotten. With everyone knowing what is going on, work gets completed on schedule. With a planned-out schedule, the team remains focused and moves from task to task without missing a beat, keeping the project on schedule and moving along.

3 main types of project scheduling

The 3 major types of project scheduling are given below:

1. Master schedule

A master schedule is a simple, straightforward list of the key tasks and their due dates for your project. It functions similarly to a quick calendar, outlining tasks and due dates.

2. A milestone schedule

This is also called a summary schedule. It only highlights the biggest events such as completing the main part of the project. It does not explain every single step of the project. In this scheduling type, things become simple and focused. 

3. A detailed schedule

A detailed schedule constitutes the most complete plan. It outlines all of the work to be done, who will do it, and when each part of the work is expected to be done. A detailed schedule is helpful for large, complex, or long projects with a lot of moving parts. When you’re working with a detailed schedule, you won’t miss anything, and everyone knows what they are supposed to do next!

7 effective steps to follow to build a strong project schedule

• Take stakeholders’ input: Don’t be single-mindedly stuck in making your schedule. It is preferable to utilize your team and stakeholders to set work, resources, dependencies, and durations.
• Use past projects: Referring to past projects of the same size and specifications can be used to make rational estimates and avoid overlooking any tasks.
• Keep things in perspective: Identify and document any factors that may be a risk to staying on schedule. This will help your risk management.
• Consider any time that is not working time: For example, be sure holidays and vacations are part of your schedule so you are not calling on people to work when they are not.
• Establish the project critical path: Building your project critical path allows you to resource and schedule the most critical tasks in the project.
• Assumptions in record scheduling: Put the reasoning for your scheduling estimates in writing. For example, if you are estimating that something will take only 10 hours to accomplish because you have a senior engineer. And then you end up with a junior engineer instead, you can see and explain why it took twice as long as estimated.
• Add project milestones: Milestones are occurrences or points that represent a significant milestone for your project. They are beneficial in developing a summary schedule, communicating with executives, and catching issues early. These are a few examples of milestones: 

• Project inception
• Design approvals
• Satisfying the needs
• Product Implementation
• Project closure

In a nutshell, project scheduling ensures that your team stays on task, that deadlines are understood, and that resources are used effectively. It guarantees project success, increases productivity, and lowers stress. Do you want to become an expert at these? Take your career to the next level by enrolling in the Project Scheduling and Cost Planning Training Course for Project Managers offered by Oxford Training Centre.