There’s plenty of pressure to try to finish projects faster. Sometimes that pressure comes from outside the team, from our managers. When it does, the team can succumb to two common agile schedule games: “Double Your Velocity” and “Everyone Start Your Own Story.” If you face these games, you do have options before they destroy your project.
Situation: We really just need a calendar...Let's face it, many people deal with small projects that don't require a professional tool jockey. They just want a simple calendar with deadlines. 30 box ...
All major projects in today’s market require a project schedule that is actively monitored. Despite this important role, managing a project schedule remains a process shrouded in assumptions, systematic automation, personal judgment, and a lack of consistent standards. Thus, this article provides the recommended best practices for creating and managing a project schedule that will help ensure that the executed work minimizes inefficiency while maximizing the potential to achieve the project’s objectives.
This document defines five factors-or "secrets"-which, when consistently implemented together, result in project schedules that are more likely to be used and maintained throughout the life of a project. A project schedule that is followed and maintained throughout a project can provide early identification of potential schedule slippage, project risks and other issues.
The success of any project (particularly information technology projects) hinges on the skills, abilities, and, most importantly, the availability of the resources that will work on the project. Accurately estimating and scheduling these resources are challenging at best and very difficult to near impossible at worst. Nearly all of the organizations I have come in contact with about this topic have echoed the same concern: resource estimation is difficult, time consuming, and sometimes the most challenging aspect of project management.
Project planning isn’t just an activity for the start of the project--the project plan must be a living, evolving document that is updated and changed on a regular basis.
By assigning point values to how well your project is staying on schedule, how many milestones have been met, and if deliverables/products and budget utilization is going according to plan, you'll get a really good feel about how well your project is doing.
When there's a lot of digging going on, you need to keep track of how, what and where. This form is designed to keep you from being buried up to your neck in confusion.