What is the difference between planning and scheduling?
Planning and scheduling go hand-in-hand. You need both to actually accomplish things
in an efficient manner.
Planning refers to the action of establishing a plan, meaning a set of tasks that needs to
be completed. “Going to the swimming pool this afternoon” is a plan. Studying hard in
high school so that you can go to that university you like, major in that topic and get
hired into that big company is a plan too; although it’s broken down into smaller steps
toward a final goal. In a business context, you will often find planning associated to
project management. During the planning phase in a project management context, the
project manager will outline all tasks that needs to be completed to attain the project’s
goal, and break that down into small chunks of work that can be assigned to team
members. Ideally you can easily assess how long each chunk of work will take to
complete, and when it’s completed. The relationship between each task is a logical
relationship, i.e. we need to do this so that we can do this and then that to get this result.
But in our modern societies, time is of the essence. This is what scheduling is all about.
Scheduling is less concerned with what is being done and why, and more with when. A
plan may or may not have time and dates associated to it, whereas a schedule most
certainly will. The schedule is typically represented in a calendar or as a timeline, in
chronological order. It may include things that are not directly related to your plan, i.e.
vacation dates, holidays, your doctor’s appointment. So the action of scheduling is
actually setting up a date and time for something to happen. Usually, you’ll also decide
on who is assigned to the task at that point - since you need to make sure that the person
scheduled is actually available at that date and time, otherwise a schedule is pretty much
meaningless.
Nowadays a lot of businesses and individuals use apps to assist them in both planning
and scheduling. For an individual it can be as simple as a to-do list app and a calendar
on a mobile device. For companies, there are thousands of solutions on the market;
some specialize in the planning side of the equation (Ms Project is a good example of
that), some in the scheduling side, and some integrate both functions to make your life
easier.
Project scheduling isn’t to be confused with project planning; in fact, it is only
one part of the plan and yet, it is a critical piece for delivering your project on
time (how do you know what is considered on time without a schedule?). This
your starting point and shouldn’t be taken lightly – a well detailed schedule will
guide you through the entire project lifecycle and keep you on track.
Here are the steps required for putting together your project schedule:
Develop your project scope
This process is carried out with all the stakeholders. The project scope outlines
the intended result of the project and what’s required to bring it to completion. In
this scope, you’ll include all the resources involved and cost and time
constraints. With this project scope, a work breakdown structure (WBS) is
developed, which outlines all the tasks and breaks them down into specific
deliverables.
Sequence of Activities
Once you have your Project Scope and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), you
can extract the list of tasks that need to be completed. To be clear, the WBS
outlines what needs to be done – not how or when. Once you have the list of
tasks, you can sequence them in the right order and estimate the time and
resources required to bring them to completion.
Group Tasks Into Phases
Once you have your Project Scope and Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), you
can extract the list of tasks that need to be completed. To be clear, the WBS
outlines what needs to be done – not how or when. Once you have the list of
tasks, you can sequence them in the right order and estimate the time and
resources required to bring them to completion.
Project conception (the idea)
The project idea is evaluated to determine if it benefits the organization, what
the benefits are and how feasible it is to bring this project to completion.
Project definition and planning (scheduling is part of this phase)
The project scope is written, outlining the work to be performed. This is also the
phase when budgets, schedules and resources required are calculated.
Project launch (this is the execution of the project)
Resources start working on their tasks, deliverables are completed, meetings
are held and status reports and development updates are submitted during this
phase.
Project Performance (comparing expectations to results)
Using Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), project managers will determine if the
project is on track.
Project close (project delivered to client and further evaluated)
This phase marks the completion of the project. Often, project managers will
organize a post mortem (meeting), to discuss project successes and failures.
Map Dependencies
After you have a clear view of all the deliverables and what’s required to
complete them, it’s time to start mapping out the dependencies between the
tasks, ie. which tasks require another task to be started or finished before it can
be performed. The dependency map will outline the relationships between
tasks. There are 4 types of dependencies to consider:
Finish-to-Start:
An activity must finish before the next activity can start.
Start-to-Start:
An activity must start before the next activity can start.
Finish-to-Finish:
An activity must finish before the next activity can finish.
Start-to-Finish:
An activity must start before the next activity can finish.
Outline Your Critical Path
With all this information, a Critical path can be developed to schedule the
project activities. A task is potentially critical if the time between its end date and
the subsequent task’s start date is zero. It becomes critical when it cannot be
delayed without delaying the whole project.
The critical path is then a sequence of linked tasks whose intervals are zero,
and this critical path will determine the duration of the project.
Define Project Milestones
Milestones are like checkpoints along your project lifecycle that mark important
activities, which ultimately help the PM to see if the project is on track.
Milestones have a duration of 0 and are not tasks in and of themselves – they
are progress points for project completion and delivery.
You might want to have 2 kinds of milestones in you project :
Internal milestones: those directly used to help your project team follow the
project progress and their own schedule.
External milestones: those meant to be communicated to
stakeholders/marketing teams/press, etc., which should be linked to global
phases of your project
7.Plan Your Human Resources
Now that you have a clear outline of all the essential activities and the timeline,
you can start adding people to the plan. Match people with the right skills sets to
the appropriate activities. A wise assumption is that people will not be 100%
productive or focused on the project – so don’t schedule all of their time. A
common rule is to allocate 80% of their time to the project and 20% to
administrative tasks, etc.
Select Start/Due Date
Once you go through all these steps and you create your project schedule,
you’ll have a fairly accurate estimate of the milestone dates and how long it will
take to bring your project to completion. At this point you can set a well-
informed due date and start date.
Remember to:
Include public holidays and employees’ days off
Take the time to properly understand and map out task dependencies
Define milestones
Make realistic task duration estimates
Determine the project duration before setting a project due date
Assign people for 80% of their working hours
Build in contingency time
Be prepared to reschedule (This may happen when one or more resources
are unavailable (illness, unexpected activities,etc)
Include these “surprises” or manage risks with a B plan
