Plan Schedule Management

00:02 This module introduces you to the plan schedule management process from the Bot guide. The exam importance is rated as medium because it's a Planning process which produces our schedule management plan.

00:16 The difficulty of memorization are both rated as low because you probably come across this before or do it already in your current job.

00:25 The plan schedule management process is the first of six processes in the planning part of Project Time Management Knowledge Area.

00:35 The others are defined activities, sequence activities, estimate activity resources, estimate activity durations and develop the project schedule.

00:46 You can say that they all run in a natural sequence, starting with plan our schedule management and develop a schedule management plan.

00:54 Use that schedule management plan then to help us define the activities.

00:58 And once we have our activity list, put them in the order in which they will occur by sequencing them.

01:04 Once we have them in order, generally, we then estimate the activity resources and then with that information is to make the activity durations.

01:13 And once we have all of that information, the defined activities, we have them sequenced. We have an estimate of the resources and the durations.

01:20 We can put all of that together as the final step in our planning process to develop our schedule and produce our project time baseline.

01:30 The domain task that this process helps us understand is Planning task for which is develop the project schedule based on the approved project deliverables and milestones, scope and resource management plans in order to manage timely completion of the project. In fact, the domain task relates to all of those time management planning activities.

01:58 The key themes of planning schedule management.

02:01 Well, this is a Planning process, and much like all of the other Planning processes that start each of the knowledge areas, it produces a management plan and this case, the schedule management plan that we're going to use to guide all of our other schedule or time management planning processes, ultimately to develop our project schedule and then also to control that project schedule to make sure that we're still on track.

02:26 It also provides guidance on how changes to the schedule will be managed if we need to change parts of it.

02:38 So in order to develop our schedule management plan, we could start with these potential inputs.

02:45 The first being the project management plan and all of its subsidiary plans and baselines. That's the other information we need to help us produce as schedule management plan.

02:57 We may also find our project charter to be useful because it's got preliminary information that we know about our project schedule.

03:06 We may have approved particular milestones to be met.

03:10 All of these things are relevant and developing as schedule management plan.

03:14 We may also find useful and relevant enterprise environmental factors and organizational process assets to help us produce our schedule management plan. Now, once we have those inputs, we may choose to use any of the following tools and techniques on them in order to create a schedule management plan.

03:34 The first of those tools and techniques is, of course, expert judgment.

03:39 And as we know, this is the one of the most popular tools and techniques throughout the whole of the Bot guide and this instance.

03:45 Remember that you are the expert.

03:48 Your project team members are experts, your project sponsor is an expert, and maybe there's some external people within your organization or outside consultants that you want to consult as well about how to develop an excellent schedule management plan. You may also choose to use analytical techniques now. Analytical techniques are any technique that you use to analyze a particular component of the project.

04:15 And this instance you may want to analyze previous documents, previous schedule management plans, perhaps previous schedules, and how they were actually managed in previous projects.

04:26 And by analyzing them, you'll pick up useful information to help you create a better schedule management plan.

04:34 You may also want to use meetings where you bring the important stakeholders together and ask for their input in the development of your schedule management plan. It's easiest to do it face to face in a meeting.

04:49 The single output from this process is the schedule management plan. Now remember, when it comes to good project management, we always start with an appropriate level of planning.

05:02 It doesn't matter what part of project management we're looking at, whether it's time or cost or scope or quality or any of the other parts.

05:09 We always start with Planning and we record our planning activities in the form of a plan.

05:16 So here we have our schedule management plan.

05:19 We also know that there are cost management plans, quality management plan, scope management plans, risk management plans.

05:26 All the other aspects have their own management plans.

05:29 The Schedule Management Plan is our particular management plan that we are going to use to guide all of our schedule management activities.

05:38 They will guide us how to define our activities and produce our activity list.

05:43 They will help us and provide guidance on how to sequence those activities and understand the relationships and dependencies between our activities.

05:51 The Schedule Management Plan will also provide guidance on what software we're going to use to put together our project schedule.

05:59 Once we've estimated the resources and durations we wish to use on it, the schedule management plan will also be useful when it comes time to control the schedule. It's going to provide the means by which we do it.

06:13 It's going to tell us how we detect variance between what we think is going to happen in terms of the project schedule and what's actually happening in terms of the project schedule. So that's the schedule management plan.

06:24 So in summary, the plan schedule management process is all about producing a plan.

06:31 In this case, the schedule management plan to guide the development and the monitoring and control of the project schedule.

06:39 And in that regard, it's like many of the other initial planning processes.

06:44 They all produce a particular management plan.

06:48 And these management plans themselves become subsidiary plans for the overall project management plan.

06:57 This has been an introduction to the planned schedule management process from the PM Bot guide.