Defining project management, defining project scheduling, practical tips, and examples.
Table of Contents
What is project management?
Project management covers the overall planning, control, coordination, and execution of a project from start to finish to reach specific targets and goals. It involves defining the project scope, creating a project plan, setting objectives, managing risks, allocating resources, monitoring progress, and ensuring timely delivery. It also involves setting a budget and completing the project within those limits.
Project managers oversee all elements of a project, including scheduling, but management extends beyond scheduling. It includes stakeholder management, risk management, quality assurance, and other general factors.
Project management – practical tips
Being familiar with the strengths and weaknesses of each person working on the project is very helpful. It not only assists the project manager in choosing the correct person for each task but also in understanding the qualifications of team members. If you have time, talk to each team member and take note of their distinctions.
If you set clear goals, you will have better results. Avoid distractions and focus on creating a disciplined work environment.
Let’s say your project is making an online course. You need to set a goal first. It could be to create a course that makes you a lot of money.
Do some research to gauge demand. The course should be about something a lot of people are interested in. Once you’ve found a highly demanded topic, draft a curriculum for your course. Decide if it will be in text form, video, etc. Make sure you have all the equipment you need.
If you opted for audio or audio-video format, the next steps would be to write a script and record the course. The last steps would be to write a course description, set a price, and upload the course.
What is project scheduling?
Project scheduling is a specific aspect of project management that focuses on creating a timeline or schedule for the project activities. Using a weekly schedule template makes scheduling much more manageable.
Project scheduling involves:
- Breaking down the project into smaller tasks.
- Estimating the time required to complete each task.
- Sequencing the tasks in the most logical order.
- Allocating resources to ensure timely completion.
Project scheduling – practical tips
Your project is the whole, but you need to divide it into stages or segments. Assess and list out the tasks you must complete in each stage. Looking at your project from a stage-by-stage perspective is helpful because you will list all the tasks required to drive a stage forward.
Get your team on board to avoid skipping a task on your list. Their collaborative effort will give you deeper insight.
You wouldn’t install the roof of a building before laying the foundations. The same is true with project scheduling. You need to rank your tasks in order of priority. List the work you need to do at the beginning, middle, and end of the project. Make sure you include the time for completion of each task so no task takes more time than needed.
Before you create a project schedule, you should determine the deliverables of the entire project. These are the results or what you intend to produce by the end of the project. It’s helpful to create milestones for each stage to ensure all stages align with what you intend to deliver. This also makes it possible to track progress more easily.
Milestones are important because they help with project evaluation. They are achieved over the course of your project and demonstrate you’re making progress. As you complete each milestone, you’re ensuring that all of the work leads up to the end goal.
Deadlines are an inevitable part of any project. Break your deadline into smaller time frames to avoid getting overwhelmed and to meet it.
Conclusion
While project scheduling is a critical component of project management, project management encompasses a broader set of activities beyond scheduling. Project management involves planning, organizing, controlling, and leading all aspects of a project to ensure its successful completion, while project scheduling specifically focuses on creating and managing the project timeline.
