Project Time Management - Control Schedule

This process monitors the status of project activities to update project progress and manage changes to the schedule baseline to achieve the plan. It helps recognize deviation so that you can take corrective actions to help minimize the risks.

Items to be concerned with when controlling the schedule includes:

• Determining the current status of the project schedule
• Influencing the factors that create schedule changes
• Determining if the project schedule has changed
• Managing the actual changes as they occur

Lets take a look at the Inputs, Tools and Techniques and Outputs of this process. 

1) Project Management Plan

• Contains the schedule management plan to describe how the schedule will be managed and controlled and the schedule baseline to compare with actual results to identify deviations. 

2) Project Schedule

• The most recent version with notations to indicate updates, completed activities, and started activities as of the indicated data date. 

3) Work Performance Data

• The information about project progress (what has started, their progress and what finished)

4) Project Calendars

• May have multiple calendars to allow for different work periods so that some activities can calculate the schedule forecast

5) Schedule Data

• Collection of information for describing and controlling the schedule

6) Organizational Process Assets

• Assets that may impact control schedule may include:
• Existing policies, procedures and guidelines
• Schedule control tools
• Monitoring and reporting methods to be used

7) Performance Reviews 

• They measure, compare and analyze schedule performance
• Trend analysis - examines project performance over time to determine whether performance is improving or deteriorating. 
• Critical path method - comparing the progress along the critical path can help determine the status of the schedule. 
• Critical chain method - comparing the amount of buffer remaining to the amount of buffer needed to protect the delivery date
• Earned value management - methodology that combines scope, schedule, and resource measurements to assess project performance and progress

8) Project Management Software

• Used to track planned dates versus actual dates so that you can report variances 

9) Resource Optimization Techniques

• Technique used to adjust the start and finish dates of activities that adjust planned resource use to be equal or less than resource availability
• Resource leveling - technique in which start and finish dates are adjusted based on resource constraints with the goal of balancing demand for resources with the available supply. It usually changes the critical path and increases it. 
• Resource smoothing - technique which adjusts the activities of a schedule model such that the requirement for resources on the project do not exceed certain predefined resource limits. The project's critical path is not changed and the completion date may not be delayed. 

10) Modeling Techniques

• Used to review various scenarios guided by risk monitoring to bring schedule into allignment 
• What-If Scenario Analysis 
• the process of evaluating scenarios in order to predict their effects, positively or negatively on the objectives of the project
• Scenarios include delaying a major component or introducing external factors
• The outcome of the analysis helps prepare contingency and response plans
• Simulation
• Involves calculating multiple project durations with different sets of activity assumptions, usually using probability distributions constructed from the three-point estimates to account for uncertainty 
• Monte Carlo analysis is the most commonly used - distribution of possible activity durations are defined for each activity and used to calculate a distribution of possible outcomes for the total project

11) Leads and Lags

• Adjusting finds ways to bring project activities that are behind into alignment with the plan
• Lead is the amount of time whereby a successor activity can be advanced with respect to a predecessor activity. 
• Lag is the amount of time whereby a successor activity will be delayed with respect to a predecessor activity. 

12) Schedule Compression

• Used to find ways to bring project activities back into allignment 
• Used to shorten the schedule duration without reducing the project scope
• Crashing - technique used to shorten the schedule duration for the least incremental cost by adding resources and may result in increase risk or cost
• Fast tracking - technique in which activities or phases normally done in sequence are preformed in parallel for at least a portion of their duration resulting in rework and increased risk

13) Scheduling tool 

• Tools that contain the schedule model and generate start and finish dates based on the inputs of activities, network diagrams, resources and activity durations. They need to be updated. 

14) Work Performance Information

• Calculated schedule variance (SV) and schedule performing index (SPI) time indicators for WBS components are documented and communicated to stakeholders

15) Schedule Forecasts

• Estimations of conditions and events in the project's future 
• Forecasts are updated and reissued

16) Change Requests

• Changes that you may encounter can include:
• Progress reports
• Results of performance measures
• Modifications to the project scope
• Modifications to the project schedule
• They go through the Perform Integrated Change Control Process

17) Project Management Plan Updates

• Updates to the following plans may include:
• Schedule baseline
• Schedule management plan
• Cost baseline

18) Project Document Updates

• Updates to the following documents may include:
• Schedule data
• Project schedule
• Risk register

19) Organizational Process Assets Updates

• Updates to the following may include:
• Causes of variances
• Corrective action chosen and the reasons
• Other types of lessons learned

Source: PMBOK 5th ed.