Creating Your Schedule
Cynthia Stackpole · 2011
The project schedule is one of the most important pieces of documentation for the project. It contains all kinds of information, identifying the following: activities needed to get the work done, milestone events and dates, the sequence in which the activities need to occur, the resources a person needs to accomplish the work, the duration and effort estimates, when activities should start and finish, activities that can slip without impacting the due date, and the critical path. Because a project schedule communicates so much information, many people mistakenly refer to it as project plan. In fact, the schedule is only one component of the project plan, but it is an important one. This chapter describes three main aspects to sequencing activities: determining the logical relationships, determining the type of dependency, and applying leads and lags. It also discusses the critical path and critical chain methodologies, and describes the preceding techniques. Controlled Vocabulary Terms Critical chain project management; project management; project planning; Project scheduling