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Plan Schedule Management

1. Plan Schedule Management

Plan Schedule Management is the process of establishing the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project schedule. The key benefit of this process is that it provides guidance and direction on how the project schedule will be managed throughout the project. 

Data flow diagram

2. Plan Schedule Management: Input

PROJECT CHARTER

The project charter is the document issued by the project initiator or sponsor that formally authorizes the existence of a project and provides the project manager with the authority to apply organizational resources to project activities.

It documents the high-level information on the project and on the product, service, or result the project is intended to satisfy. Such as: 

– Project purpose; 

– Measurable project objectives and related success criteria; 

– High-level requirements; 

– High-level project description, boundaries, and key deliverables; 

– Overall project risk; 

– Summary milestone schedule; 

– Preapproved financial resources; 

– Key stakeholder list; 

– Project approval requirements (i.e., what constitutes project success, who decides the project is successful, and who signs off on the project); 

– Project exit criteria (i.e., what are the conditions to be met in order to close or to cancel the project or phase); 

– Assigned project manager, responsibility, and authority level; and 

– Name and authority of the sponsor or other person(s) authorizing the project charter

PROJECT MANAGEMENT PLAN

Scope management plan: The scope management plan describes how the scope will be defined and developed, which will provide information on how the schedule will be developed.

Development approach: The product development approach will help define the scheduling approach, estimating techniques, scheduling tools, and techniques for controlling the schedule.

ENTERPRISE ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS

The enterprise environmental factors that can influence the Plan Schedule Management process include but are not limited to:

– Organizational culture and structure,

– Team resource availability and skills and physical resource availability,

– Scheduling software,

– Guidelines and criteria for tailoring the organization’s set of standard processes and procedures to satisfy the specific needs of the project, and- Commercial databases, such as standardized estimating data.

ORGANIZATIONAL PROCESS ASSETS

The organizational process assets that can influence the Plan Schedule Management process include but are not limited to:

– Historical information and lessons learned repositories;

– Existing formal and informal schedule development, management- and control-related policies, procedures,

and guidelines;

– Templates and forms; and- Monitoring and reporting tools

3. Tools & Techniques

EXPERT JUDGMENT

Expertise should be considered from individuals or groups with knowledge of or experience with similar projects

– Schedule development, management, and control;

– Scheduling methodologies (e.g., predictive or adaptive life cycle);

– Scheduling software; and

– The specific industry for which the project is developed.

Including:

  • Units within the organization;
  • Consultants;
  • Stakeholders, including customers or sponsors;
  • Professional and technical associations;
  • Industry groups;
  • Subject matter experts (SME);
  • Project management office (PMO);
  • Suppliers.

DATA ANALYSIS

A data analysis technique that can be used for this process includes but is not limited to alternatives analysis.

Alternatives analysis can include determining which schedule methodology to use, or how to combine various

methods on the project. It can also include determining how detailed the schedule needs to be, the duration of

waves for rolling wave planning, and how often it should be reviewed and updated.

MEETINGS

Project teams may hold planning meetings to develop the schedule management plan. Participants at these meetings may include the project manager, the project sponsor, selected project team members, selected stakeholders, anyone with responsibility for schedule planning or execution, and others as needed

4. Plan Schedule Management: Output

SCHEDULE MANAGEMENT PLAN

The schedule management plan is a component of the project management plan that establishes the criteria

and the activities for developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule. The schedule management plan may be

formal or informal, highly detailed, or broadly framed based on the needs of the project, and includes appropriate

control thresholds

The schedule management plan can establish the following:

– Project schedule model development.

– Release and iteration length.

– Level of accuracy

– Units of measure

– Organizational procedures links

– Project schedule model maintenance

– Control thresholds

– Rules of performance measurement

– Reporting formats

※The End Result

The final result of the scheduling process will be a task list with the following things determined for each task:

  1. Start and End dates
  2. Budget

It is usually helpful to have the schedule drawn out into a horizontal bar chart called a gantt chart.

Of course, overall project completion date and budget are also determined if the optimized values are determined for each task.

5. References