I work for a software implementation company and I want to create a project schedule template that I can re-use for implementations. The problem I have is that this software comes in modules and not all customers get all modules and the order of the module implementation also changes for each customer. So pretty much, each implementation has it's own list of modules in its own order.
I'm looking for ideas on how I can tackle this so I don't have to create each project schedule from scratch. Thanks in advance. Saving Changes...
Why not have an overall implementation schedule with key initiation and closeout activities and with placeholders for the different modules and then individual templates for each module? That way, you can insert in the module templates which apply when planning a new client implementation.
I second Kiron's input. Modularize the schedules. This can be done at various levels depending on how it makes sense to your products.
I was involved in a major effort years ago to transition our products from all the work statement going into a single bucket that has to be re-constructed from scratch each time, to a modular structure of many reusable buckets to leverage the reuse and reduce work.
The same thing happened to the schedules as happened to the product. If you provide a standard schedule template for Module A, you can assemble the master schedule by combining the reusable schedule flows. One trick to this however is understanding the inter-dependencies between the modules so that you know when an element of Schedule A affects Schedule B. Saving Changes...
