Scheduling Best Practices To Keep Project On Track

Project schedules form an important part of planning. However, some common mistakes repeated by the schedulers often mess up the entire planning process. This article aims to look at most frequently committed scheduling mistakes which need to be avoided to remain on track for projects progress. Let us review each one by one and what it means for schedulers.

Sched Sample 1

Defining of Logics

The most common scheduling problem is leaving logic activities open ended. The activity with open ended logic does not have any successor attached to it, suspending without anywhere further to go down. There can be some scenarios in real world where this is pretty much possible that an activity does not have any sub-activities or successors related to it. However, avoid this kind of open ended logics for activities. If you fail to complete the flow, the activity falls out of critical path. If you must leave activity logic without any successors attached to it, add a constraint date.

Cautious Use of Activity Constraints

The use of constraints needs to be carefully exercised as these not usually necessarily mentioned at start or finish dates all the time. A constraint usually establishes a relationship between two activities. In this case one cannot be completed without the other. Or it can also be related to some particular deadline for a certain type of activity which needs to be completed before a specified date. A lot of guidelines for scheduling recommended sparse use of activity constraints for project scheduling.

Hard constraints are usually introduced when the open ended logic activity represents a major project milestone. In that case, hard lines can be added to lock down starting and ending dates. This practice will provide greater clarity. A milestone can be added to this open or suspended activity and the constraint is accordingly applied. The guidelines which do not encourage using constraints advocate following a safer path as not following them may create confusion between constrained activities and critical path. The true critical path can easily get overcrowded with too many constraints. Therefore, constraints only need to be used when you must have to use them. Rely on constraints like start date, end date or before or after type.

Activity Duration Dilemma

Activities without creating any deliverables cannot be usually defined in certain lengths. However, works which are measurable need to be described clearly in terms of duration required for completion. Usually, the activities duration must not exceed three months as a general guideline. An activity exceeding this period normally represents more than just an activity, an integral component of the overall project summary. In that case, this can be further divided into smaller parts to avoid confusion and be able to identify smaller tasks that need to be accomplished to complete the overall task.

Conclusion

The guidelines only provide you with industry best practices. These guidelines can be customized to match a particular situation and are not hard and fast rules which you have to abide by at all costs. Schedulers, who need to accommodate day to day contingency situations must carefully set guidelines.

A Guide to Creating Effective Primavera P6 Schedule

Scheduling forms an integral part of project management. There can be hundreds or few thousand of activities which need to be scheduled. The scheduling without any predecessor or successor relationships can create multiple problems for the project manager. The interconnectedness decides the order in which all tasks can be executed to achieve desired results. Lack of relationships means no network which would have no critical paths to follow. Here is a look at some simple tips to avoid this dilemma.
Primavera P6 Schedule

Set Milestones
Milestones set you apart by standing out for anyone who is going through the layout. Make sure that all milestones are put under one Work Breakdown Structure element on top right of the project. All you need to do is to add one Work Breakdown structure which can be named Important Milestones. Now cut and paste every milestone set in the project under this WBS element to make things easier to manage.

Naming Cost Heads

The allocation of costs is a very important part not only for the accounting team but also for the management to understand flow of budget. Generic names for resources can only create confusion. The best way to name cost heads is to make them relatable. For example, cash paid or interest accrued is too general a name given to a cost head. On contrary, if you name it something on the lines of travel or daily wages paid, it will make things crystal clear for every stakeholder involved.

When to Be Vague?

Some of the projects started are very large and nothing can be said about their scope with certainty. This is the case where naming conventions should convey that sense of broader aspects of matters to accommodate the changes which would occur at later stages of the project. The use abbreviations should be intelligent yet balanced. If you choose too many abbreviations, it would make it different for the management to interpret various activities named. On the other hand, too few or generic names can also generalize or oversimplify matters.

Calendar Use

The use of calendars cannot be over emphasized. The best way to remain on schedule in Primavera P6 is to make use of as many calendars as possible. There are many benefits of using multiple calendars. The first major advantage is that different activities can have separated into sub-schedules or perhaps there may be different teams working on various parts of the project. Similarly, in some projects, each phase is not rigidly tied to another milestone or dependency in completion which means separate calendars of activities can be maintained.

Incrementing and Managing Activities

The default incrementing in Primavera P6 is done by 10. However, it is highly recommended that you increment activities by 1 instead. The creation of 1 increment helps you create a simple to understand numbering convention which would ensure no other activities are added at later stages to jumble things up. Unlike the older version, you will not have to renumber all activities should you feel the need to add one activity in between as Primavera P6 automatically increments the rest of the activities. And do not force yourself to set dates for every activity. Half of the activities should have constraints so you are able to understand flow of logic in dependencies without getting overburdened with too much data to understand.

 

Partner

Partner & Affiliations