Today on Project Management Guide we are looking at project scheduling, a vital part of the project planning process.  I am going to try and focus especially on how to get this kicked off with a meeting, bringing in other people from your project team.

As we saw in the previous section of the guide, Project Planning – The Art of Prophecy, scheduling is just one of the many parts of a project plan.  To pull our schedule together, we need to draw on some of the other sections.  Remember, though, that scheduling is just one part of the plan, so it will feed back information into the plan, as well as drawing from it, until you have a completed plan.

At the start of a project, I find it most useful to use something called top-down scheduling.  In essence, what you are doing is organising the project into discrete chunks, each of which ends with a milestone.  Then, drawing on the knowledge and expertise of your project team, work to identify what tasks have to go into each of these sections to achieve the milestone.  You can then estimate how long the sections will take.

Another option is to use bottom up scheduling.  This basically takes the reverse approach!  You and your team identify what tasks need to be done, and identify milestones from the tasks.  This can be particularly useful in some software projects.

These two broad techniques are very useful.  What I find to be most useful in them is the way it brings other team members into the process, enabling them to buy-in to the final schedule.  One of the best ways to do this is run the scheduling meeting in the right way.

For example, I have often used pads of sticky notes to get everyone involved.  I hold a meeting with appropriate members of the team, and make sure all of them have a pad.  Once we have agreed the major milestones, I encourage them to start writing tasks down on their pads, and sticking each task on the wall, under the appropriate section of the project.  This helps to start discussion between the team members, and can also help them to see the dependencies across different project streams.

By the end of the meeting, you should have a good idea of the schedule, and can then start to put it together – with an eye on the resources for each task.

I hope you have found this section of the Project Management Guide useful.  What other techniques do you use in planning and scheduling?  What has been most useful to you?  Comment below!