It's Not Just a Task List
A project schedule is so much more that a list of tasks and assignments. It becomes the heart of the project plan. A properly constructed project schedule can help you plan for risk, adjust to tasks finishing early and late, and communicate effectively with your team. Many project managers have yet to harness the power of a scheduling tool like Microsoft Project or Open Workbench (discussed in Chapter 15), and instead are using a spreadsheet tool like Microsoft Excel to manage their projects. This becomes such a large disadvantage because of the amount of manual work it takes to update the plan as well as the propensity for error.
You must take the time to learn and utilize a scheduling tool. The tool should update the entire plan for you based on entry criteria such as a finish date. By learning these tools, you can begin to manage the schedule instead of the schedule managing you.
A project schedule should ebb and flow as things finish early or late. In order to take full advantage of scheduling tools, you should understand the following.
Task Dependencies
Tasks in project schedules should be linked to each other. There are four types of relationships. Each relationship is read as “Task 1 must _____ before Task 2 can _____.” The relationships are:
Finish to Start (FS) — Task 1 must finish before Task 2 can start. This is the most common relationship. The product can be ordered after the purchase order is signed. Ordering the product has a finish-to-start relationship with signing the purchase order.
Start to Start (SS) — Task 1 must start before Task 2 can start. This dependency is most often used to link tasks that can start at the same time. A landscaping team can mow the lawn and edge the lawn at the same time. Therefore, “Mow Lawn” has a start-to-start relationship with “Edge Lawn.”
Finish to Finish (FF) — Task 1 must finish before task 2 can finish. This relationship is used to link tasks that can be worked in parallel, but one can't finish until the other does. A drywall hanger begins to create the walls inside a home. A painter can start painting the walls immediately after, but can't finish until the drywall hanger is complete. Therefore, “Paint Walls” has a finish-to-finish relationship with “Hang Walls.”
Start to Finish — The previous task must start before the next task can finish. This is the most uncommon of the predecessors, but is a defined dependency. There are rare cases to use this, but most likely the three prior dependencies will cover most scenarios.
Linking your tasks with dependencies will allow your schedule to expand or collapse as linked tasks are completed.
Scheduling Rules
A properly constructed project schedule should follow these rules:
Each task in the plan (except for the first task) should have a predecessor. This predecessor should have one of the dependencies associated.
There should be no manually entered dates. The finish date for the project should “fall out” of the scheduling tool. The scheduling tool will use the durations, predecessors, and dependencies to set the end date of the project.
Duration estimates should come from your team.
Following these simple rules will allow you to create a project schedule that can help with projection of completion dates, course correct when bad things occur, and communicate to the team when they should be ready to start their next tasks.
