MS Project Tutorial 3 - project schedule

15 Tips To Create A Schedule In MS Project

1. Create a detailed activity list or a deliverable based work break down structure. Group them under a summary task like design, testing etc.

2. Instead of understanding & negotiating on mythical man months, I recommend to take optimistic, pessimistic & most likely hood estimation for work/duration. I derive the expected duration using pert formula and put that in work/duration column.

Here is a great video by Dr. Pamela Zelbst on the Critical Path Method and the PERT Method 

3. Always put a proper successor & predecessor for all activities. Insert lag, where ever requires, while linking two jobs. Don’t link a job from middle of any job like start to start + 5 days. It is recommended to split the tasks for better project control.

4. Customize the calendar as per your resource and use resource calendar. This will really help in managing finance and charging overtime rate (if require).

5. I advised to consider 6 hours per day during planning. I found this gives a much realistic plan because people spend time on meetings & other necessary activities. Keep all your resources evenly loaded. You need to be flexible enough to move resources between activities to keep the program on schedule. But, always ensure people move to other task only after completing the current task.Now a days resource hand over is critical for any project manager.

6. Understand the resource overload using Microsoft automatic leveling feature but manually fix them. I recommend using network diagram which will really help you to optimize resource planning & scheduling. This takes time but worth to do it.

7. Find the critical path using MS Project wizard and evaluate the same manually using project network diagram. You need to find actual critical path of the entire program/project and get it agreed with others in the program. Critical path is not fixed and it gets changed during execution of the program. I personally put 2/3 days slack while calculating critical path because this work as project buffer.

8. Present the plan and get it approved by all performing teams & stakeholders. This is required to baseline the plan. Set up a status date for the program. Baseline & status date is required for reporting & tracking the plan.

9. You should put Risks & Issues as additional column in the Gnatt chart. I will teach you how to build an add-in to track Risks visually in one of the forth coming tutorials.

10. If your program is duration based use % work completed or if your program effort based use % of actual work done to track progress of work. Always re-estimate the remaining work/duration and update the same in remaining work/duration field.

11. During tracking always capture actual start and finish date for reporting purpose. Always question person why the activities got delayed, what artifacts they produced from last review, details of remaining jobs. This will help you in risk management.

12. Put actual cost of resources or a value to calculate CPI & SPI for your program, These are necessary to “build & report S curve”.

13. Check your schedule for probability of completion the project in the given time frame. This important but seldom followed. To  know more on Z scope of operation research , watch the above video.

14. You should maintain the master copy & never allow anybody to update the plan. You should distribute the updated plan along with basic reports in PDF format or store them in a designated area. Will teach you how to send weekly status using email automatically.

15. The 'Notes' field, accessible via the 'Task Information' dialog box, can hold very useful information that does not belong in the task name, including where or how the task should be performed, as well as other scheduling considerations. Also add task notes to indicate unusual scheduling situations: If you or one of your colleagues is reviewing your project schedule at some point in the future, it may not be obvious why a constraint was imposed on a task.

Tutorial on how to create a schedule using Microsoft Project 2013 

Default configuration of MS Project for better scheduling

• Always add new task in automatic mode.
• Adjust the time scale to weeks view
• Adjust the color, font for activity & Gantt chart as per your preference. Here is a good article on MS Project tips & tricks.
• Avoid using resource names to summary tasks or milestones.

"Failing to plan is planning to fail," So, follow the above tips to make a robust plan which is easy to track but can also support the agility of business.

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