Chapter 3

Project Time Management

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 Importance of Project Schedules

▪ Project time management involves the process required to

ensure timely completion of a project.
▪ Managers often cite delivering projects on time as one of
their biggest challenges.
▪ Schedule issues are the main reason for conflicts on
projects, especially during the second half of projects.
▪ Time has the least amount of flexibility; it passes no
matter what happens on a project.

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 Cont…

▪ Individual Work Styles and Cultural Differences Cause

Schedule Conflicts
❖Some people prefer to follow schedules and meet
deadlines while others do not.
❖Different cultures and even entire countries have
different attitudes about schedules.

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 Project Time Management Processes
▪ Planning Schedule Management: Defines how the project
schedule will be managed, executed, and controlled.
▪ Activity definition: Identifying the specific activities that the
project team members and stakeholders must perform to
produce the project deliverables.
▪ Activity sequencing: Identifying and documenting the
relationships between project activities.
▪ Activity resource estimating: Estimating how many resources
a project team should use to perform project activities.
▪ Activity duration estimating: Estimating the number of work
periods that are needed to complete individual activities.
▪ Schedule development: Analyzing activity sequences, activity
resource estimates, and activity duration estimates to create the
project schedule.
▪ Schedule control: Controlling and managing changes to the
project schedule.
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 1. Planning Schedule Management
▪ The first step in project time management is planning how the
schedule will be managed throughout the life of the project.
▪ Project schedules grow out of the basic documents, project charter,
that initiate a project.
▪ The project charter often mentions planned project start and end
dates, which serve as the starting points for a more detailed
schedule.
▪ After reviewing the project management plan, project charter,
enterprise environmental factors, and organizational process assets,
the project team uses expert judgment, analytical techniques, and
meetings to develop the schedule management plan.
▪ The schedule management plan, like the scope management plan, is
detailed project time management description based on the needs of
the project.
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Schedule management plan includes the following information:
• Project schedule model development:
• which contains project activities with estimated durations, dependencies, and
other planning information that can be used to produce a project schedule
• Level of accuracy and units of measure:
• discusses how accurate schedule estimates should be and determines
whether time is measured in hours, days, or another unit.
• Control thresholds:
• Variance thresholds, such as ±10%, are established for monitoring schedule
performance.
• Rules of performance measurement:
• Team members are expected to track the percentage of work completed;
this section specifies how to determine the percentages.
• Reporting formats:
• This section describes the format and frequency of schedule reports
required for the project.
• Process descriptions:
• The schedule management plan also describes how all of the schedule
management processes will be performed.
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 2. Activity Definition
▪ An activity or task is an element of work normally found
on the Work based system that has an expected duration, a
cost, and resource requirements.
▪ Project schedules grow out of the basic documents that
initiate a project.
▪ The project charter includes start and end dates and budget
information.
▪ The scope statement define what will be done.
▪ Activity definition involves developing a more detailed
Work Based System and supporting explanations to
understand all the work to be done, so you can develop
realistic cost and duration estimates.

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 Activity Lists and Attributes
▪ An activity list is a tabulation of activities to be included
on a project schedule. The list should include:
▪ The activity name
▪ An activity identifier or number
▪ A brief description of the activity
▪ Activity attributes provide more information about each
activity, such as predecessors, successors, logical
relationships, leads and lags, resource requirements,
constraints, imposed dates, and assumptions related to the
activity.

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 3. Activity Sequencing
▪ Involves reviewing activities and determining
dependencies.
▪ A dependency or relationship relates to the
sequencing of project activities or tasks.
▪ we must determine dependencies in order to use
critical path analysis.
▪ Network diagrams are the preferred technique for
showing activity sequencing.
▪ A network diagram is a schematic display of the
logical relationships among, or sequencing of, project
activities.
▪ Two main formats are the arrow and precedence
diagramming methods.
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Sample Activity-on-Arrow (AOA) Network Diagram for Project X

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 4. Activity Resource Estimating
▪ Before estimating activity durations, you must have a
good idea of the quantity and type of resources that will
be assigned to each activity.
▪ Consider important issues in estimating resources:
▪ How difficult will it be to complete specific activities on
this project?
▪ What is the organization’s history in doing similar
activities?
▪ Are the required resources available?

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 5. Activity Duration Estimating
▪ Duration includes the actual amount of time worked on
an activity plus the elapsed time.
▪ Effort is the number of workdays or work hours required
to complete a task.
▪ Effort does not normally equal duration.
▪ People doing the work should help create estimates, and
an expert should review them.
▪ Instead of providing activity estimates as a discrete
number, such as four weeks, it’s often helpful to create a
three-point estimate:
▪ An estimate that includes an optimistic, most likely,
and pessimistic estimate, such as three weeks for the
optimistic, four weeks for the most likely, and five
weeks for the pessimistic estimate. 13
 6. Schedule Development

▪ Uses results of the other time management processes

to determine the start and end dates of the project.

▪ Ultimate goal is to create a realistic project schedule

that provides a basis for monitoring project progress
for the time dimension of the project.

▪ Important tools and techniques include Gantt charts,

critical path analysis, critical chain scheduling, etc

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 Gantt Charts

▪ Gantt charts provide a standard format for

displaying project schedule information by listing
project activities and their corresponding start and
finish dates in a calendar format.
▪ Symbols include:
▪ Black diamonds: Milestones
▪ Thick black bars: Summary tasks
▪ Lighter horizontal bars: Durations of tasks
▪ Arrows: Dependencies between tasks

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 Gantt Chart for Project X

Note: In Project 2003 darker bars are red to represent critical tasks.

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 Adding Milestones to Gantt Charts
▪ Many people like to focus on meeting milestones,
especially for large projects.
▪ Milestones emphasize important events or
accomplishments in projects.
▪ You typically create milestone by entering tasks that
have a zero duration, or you can mark any task as a
milestone.
▪ Milestones should be SMART
▪ Specific
▪ Measurable
▪ Assignable
▪ Realistic
▪ Time-framed
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Sample Tracking Gantt Chart

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 Critical Path Method (CPM)

▪ CPM is a network diagramming technique used to

predict total project duration.
▪ A critical path for a project is the series of activities that
determines the earliest time by which the project can be
completed.
▪ The critical path is the longest path through the network
diagram and has the least amount of slack or float.
▪ Slack or float is the amount of time an activity can be
delayed without delaying a succeeding activity or the
project finish date.

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 Calculating the Critical Path

▪ Develop a good network diagram.

▪ Add the duration estimates for all activities on each
path through the network diagram.
▪ The longest path is the critical path.
▪ If one or more of the activities on the critical path takes
longer than planned, the whole project schedule will
slip unless the project manager takes corrective action.

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Determining the Critical Path for Project X

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 …cont`d
▪ The critical path does not necessarily contain all the
critical activities; it only accounts for time.
▪ There can be more than one critical path if the lengths of
two or more paths are the same.
▪ The critical path can change as the project progresses.

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 Using the Critical Path to Shorten a Project Schedule

▪ Three main techniques for shortening schedules:

▪ Shortening the duration of critical activities or tasks by
adding more resources or changing their scope.
▪ Crashing activities by obtaining the greatest amount of
schedule compression for the least incremental cost.
▪ Fast tracking activities by doing them in parallel or
overlapping them.

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Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

▪ PERT is a network analysis technique used to estimate

project duration when there is a high degree of
uncertainty about the individual activity duration
estimates.

▪ PERT uses probabilistic time estimates:

▪ Duration estimates based on using optimistic, most

likely, and pessimistic estimates of activity durations, or
a three-point estimate.

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 PERT Formula and Example
▪ PERT weighted average =
optimistic time + 4X most likely time + pessimistic time
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▪ Example:
optimistic time= 8 days
most likely time = 10 days
pessimistic time = 24 days
PERT weighted average =
8 workdays + 4 X 10 workdays + 24 workdays = 12 days
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 7. Schedule Control
▪ Perform reality checks on schedules.
▪ Allow for contingency.
▪ Don’t plan for everyone to work at 100 percent
capacity all the time.
▪ Hold progress meetings with stakeholders and be clear
and honest in communicating schedule issues.
▪ Tools and techniques include:
▪ Progress reports.
▪ A schedule change control system.
▪ Project management software, including schedule comparison
charts, such as the tracking Gantt chart.
▪ Variance analysis, such as analyzing float or slack.
▪ Performance management, such as earned value. 26
Using Software to Assist in Time Management
▪ Software for facilitating communication helps people
exchange schedule-related information.
▪ Decision support models help analyze trade-offs that
can be made.
▪ Project management software can help in various time
management areas.

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