Scheduling tools and techniques help you to plan and execute a project successfully. They organize and structure the work so that you can complete the project on time and within the budget.
Scheduling tools include things like Gantt charts, critical path method (CPM), program evaluation review technique (PERT). This article covers all such scheduling tools and discusses what is scheduling in project management.
Depending on your team, your timeline, your resources, and your methodologies, the type of schedule you create can vary. Here are three common types of project schedules many companies follow:
- The master schedule. A master project schedule lists high-level project tasks within a timeline or project calendar. The steps to creating a master schedule include clarifying a project’s objectives, breaking down project work, sequencing work activities, estimating activity durations and costs, and noting time constraints and resources.
- The milestone schedule. This schedule acts as a summary for your project and tracks major milestones and key deliverables. A milestone schedule doesn’t include every intricate detail and subtask required to complete the project. This simpler view offers a less detailed version that can be shared with your team or presented to stakeholders.
- The detailed project schedule. A detailed project schedule is the most thorough schedule type as it manages every single project task and activity. This is ideal for large and lengthy projects as it helps you to ensure that nothing falls through the cracks.
GANTT Chart
This is a horizontal bar chart plotted over time (e.g. days, weeks or months). Each activity is shown as a bar (its length based on a time estimate). Depending on task dependencies and resource availability, these bars may be sequential, or run in parallel. Each bar is plotted to start at the earlier possible start date. The plan laid out when the GANTT Chart was created can be compared with actual times taken (plotted below the planned time bars in the chart).
Monday.com
Monday.com offers project scheduling, planning, and tracking, in addition to other helpful features. Collaboration is a popular feature for monday.com, as its corresponding app makes it easy for everyone on the team to keep in touch and stay on the same page. Users can break down projects into phases and tasks, and keep a high-level overview of who is working on what.
This project scheduling tool was built with intuitive collaboration features that are easy to learn and quickly understand. Most of the project scheduling features in monday.com are in the “timelines” feature where users can plan projects, set deadlines, assign team members, break down tasks, and set dependencies.
Here’s a quick list of monday.com’s best features:
- Provides centralized communication, file sharing, and document management
- Schedule interface is colorful and graphically pleasing
- Great when it comes to customization
- Simple design for calendar and task scheduling
- Users can view timelines as spreadsheets, lists, on a map, or on a Kanban board
- Enables progress tracking with big picture views using reporting dashboards that collect data from multiple boards
- Features ready-to-use templates that you can customize to match each project’s needs
- Users can see the progress and status of their projects at a glance
- Offers productivity features like time tracking, automated notifications, dependencies, timeline view, and integrations
- Has a wide range of integrations to support what your company is already using
Pricing: Monday.com prices for plans that include time tracking, charts, boards, and dashboards run at $48/month. It isn’t the cheapest option on the list, but it’s got some good features that take the edge off the expensive price tag.
While monday.com is a flexible and intuitive schedule management software tool, it doesn’t yet allow users to make Gantt charts or import and export MPP files. Additionally, monday.com may be better suited for smaller companies as opposed to larger ones with hundreds of clients since there is limited space in their scheduling features. That said, companies using monday.com can see where tasks are bottlenecking which helps them to easily understand who’s currently working on what.
Task lists
This is the simplest scheduling technique and works for small projects without a lot of interdependencies. However, for larger projects, it may not be the right choice as tracking the progress can become a major challenge.
The task list contains the list of tasks and subtasks along with the team members assigned to do them. An online project management software can come in handy when you’re using task lists.
Schedule Network Analysis
The schedule network is a graphical display (from left to right across a page) of all logical interrelationships between elements of work — in chronological order, from initial planning through to project closure. As a project progresses, regular analysis of this network diagram is a check to ensure the project is proceeding ‘on track’.
NiftyPM
NiftyPM is intended to be a single hub where every phase of a project can live. Designed to cater to all business types and sizes, NiftyPM is a workflow collaboration tool that aligns project teams, assists in project cycles, and automates progress reporting. The Nifty app also helps to keep all team members on the same page, even when they’re away from their desks.
Here are some of Nifty’s best features:
- Intuitive interface that’s easy-to-use
- Consolidates project communications, timelines, tasks, assets, and automatic project tracking
- Provides its users with an overview of a team’s deadlines and priorities
- Users can track project roadmaps, collaborate on tasks, and communicate with the team and client
- Provides a centralized workspace where all collaborative documents can be stored
- Milestones provide a visual project guide and automating progress tracking based on task completion and give real-time status updates to project tasks
- Project Portfolios bring better organization to team members and structure to projects for an overall better workflow
Pricing: Nifty offers four pricing tiers, with the lowest being $39 per month. This tier includes Nifty’s core features and allows for 10 team members. With the higher-priced option, you can have up to 30 team members and access more of their features for $124 per month.
Critical Path Method
The critical path of a project is the sequential string of activities that takes the longest time to complete, recognising any dependencies between tasks in this sequence (e.g. one cannot start till another finishes). Arrowed lines represent activities with circles at each end representing milestones (start and finish).
The critical path method (CPM) determines by adding the times of all activities on the critical path, the earliest time that the project can be completed
Non-critical activities have an earliest and latest start time (ES and LS, respectively) and an earliest and latest finish time (EF and LF, respectively). The ES and EF are found by working forwards through the project network and the LS and LF by working backwards. The difference between the LF and EF of each activity have zero float; they must be done when planned or the project overall will be delayed.
Hive
Hive is a project management and collaboration software great for smaller teams looking for a central place to collaborate. This centralized workflow management system helps teams operate and work better together, and includes features like messaging panels, messaging boards, project panels, and personal boards.
This compact software can help to improve workplace productivity. If you’re familiar with software such as Asana, Trello, or Basecamp, you’ll easily be able to transition over to using Hive. The 8-step set-up customizes its features so that they fit different methods or goals and gets teams onboard quickly.
Hive helps teams track project progress and execute campaigns by streamlining information and conversations between team members. Its templates allow teams to create repeatable tasks and projects that can be duplicated and executed easily.
Here are some of Hive’s top features:
- Simplified navigation for an intuitive user experience
- Personalized actions that let each user keep track of what’s assigned to them and what’s due each day
- Provides apps like resourcing, timesheets, and analytics
- Ability to “Pin” projects and favorite apps for easier and quicker access
- Features a new and aesthetic Kanban board layout with the ability to apply an action template, convert an action, or mark it as urgent
- Allows integrations between over 1,000 tools including Jira, Zoom, Salesforce, Slack Box, and Dropbox
- Pulls Gmail or Outlook email into the tool and allows users to attach emails to new or existing tasks
Pricing: Hive’s base package includes email integration, dashboards, summary views, and project layouts among a few other features. This first-level option costs $16 per user, per month, but they also offer a higher-priced full-package option with pricing available upon request.
Conclusion:
Scheduling is one of the most important project management actives that help you to organize, control and give an order to task execution. Scheduling tools are helpful tools to support the scheduling activity. Project managers use scheduling tools extensively in order to manage their projects effectively.