Part 154: Schedule Management Plan
(OUTPUT Project Schedule Management: Plan Schedule Management)
- The Schedule Management Plan establishes activities & criteria for developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule
- Can be Formal or Informal, Detailed or Broad
- Can contain
- Project Schedule Model Development
- The methods and tools to be used in the development of the schedule
- Release and Iteration Length
- This includes Time-Boxing (a period where you work towards a single goal).
- This forces you to complete the most important parts of the project first.
- If you complete the most important parts first, you avoid scope creep. Less essential features can wait!
- In an adaptive life cycle, how long should each iteration last?
- In Rolling Wave Planning, how often should each wave occur?
- This includes Time-Boxing (a period where you work towards a single goal).
- Level of Accuracy
- Acceptable range for determining activity durations
- Should contain space for contingencies
- Units of Measure
- How each schedule component will be measured (hours, days, weeks, etc.)
- Organizational Procedures Links
- We use the Work Breakdown Structure we developed earlier to help us build the schedule
- Remember that the WBS contains all the components we need to build, so we can now schedule each component
- Project Schedule Model Maintenance
- The process we will use to update status and record project progress in the schedule
- Control Threshold
- Remember that we aren’t going to be able to estimate each activity’s schedule exactly to the second, or even to the day. Some variation is permitted.
- The Control Threshold is the amount of schedule variation permitted before action must be taken
- Usually expressed as a percentage of the baseline
- Rules of Performance Measurement
- How will we measure performance?
- Earned Value Management (EVM) rules or other physical management rules can be used
- We can also specify
- Rules for determining percentage of completion
- EVM techniques to be used
- Schedule performance measurements like Schedule Variance (SV) or Schedule Performance Index (SPI)
- Control accounts that will be used to measure progress
- Reporting formats (how often will we report on the schedule and in what format?)
- Project Schedule Model Development