Project Time Management - Plan Schedule Management

This is the process of establishing the policies, procedures, and documentation for planning, developing, managing, executing, and controlling the project schedule.

•  It is a component of the Project Management plan. 
• It can be formal or informal 
• Highly detailed or broadly framed
• Includes appropriate control thresholds
• Defines how schedule contingencies will be reported and assessed 

Let's take a look at the Inputs, Tools and Techniques, and Outputs of this process. 

1) Project Management Plan

• Information used to develop the schedule management plan would include:
• Scope baseline - includes the project scope statement and the WBS details used to define activities, durations and schedule management 
• Other information - other scheduling relating to cost, risk and communications decisions 

2) Project Charter

• defines the summary milestone schedule and project approval requirements that will influence the management of the project schedule

3) Enterprise Environmental Factors

• Factors that will influence the Plan Schedule Management will include: 
• Organizational culture and structure
• Resource availability and skills
• Project management software provides alternatives to managing schedule
• Published commercial information (resource productivity information) 
• Organizational work authorization systems

4) Organizational Process Assets

• Process assets that influence this process may include:
• Monitoring and reporting tools
• Historical information 
• Schedule control tools
• Existing policies, procedures and guidelines
• Templates
• Project closure guidelines
• Change control procedures
• Risk control procedures

5) Expert Judgement

• Using experts to help you decide on whether to combine methods and how to reconcile differences between them. 

6) Analytical Techniques

• Choose strategic options to estimate and schedule the project
• Scheduling methodology
• Scheduling tools and techniques
• Estimating approaches
• Formats
• Project management software
• Organizational policies and procedures 
• Rolling wave planning - iterative planning technique in which the work to be accomplished in the near term is planned in detail, while the work in the future is planned at a higher level
• Leads and lags 
• Lead - amount of time whereby a successor activity can be advanced with respect to a predecessor activity
• Lag - amount of time whereby a successor activity is required to be delayed with respect to a predecessor activity
• Alternatives analysis - technique used to evaluate identified option in oder to select which options or approaches to use to executer and perform the work of the project
• Methods for reviewing schedule performance

7) Meetings

• Planned meetings to develop the schedule management plan with project teams. 

8) Schedule Management Plan

• It establishes the criteria and activities for developing, monitoring, and controlling the schedule. It can be made up of the following:
• Project schedule model development - Scheduling methodology and the scheduling tool to be used in the development of the schedule model are specified
• Level of accuracy - acceptable range used in determining realistic activity duration estimates
• Units of measure - Each is defined for each resource 
• staff hours
• staff days
• meters
• liters
• tons
• cubic yards for quantity measures
• Organizational procedures links - The work breakdown structure (WBS) provides this framework 
• Project schedule model maintenance - update the status and record progress of the project in the schedule model is defined
• Control thresholds - Variance thresholds will be specified to indicate the degree of variance allowed before some action needs to be taken. 
• Rules of performance measurement - Earned value management (EVM) rules or other physical measurement rules.
• Rules for establishing percent complete
• Control accounts for management of progress and schedule to be measured
• Earned value measurements techniques (Baselines, fixed formulas, etc.) 
• Schedule performance measurements (schedule variances (SV) and Schedule performance index (SPI))
• Reporting formats - formats and frequency that are defined
• Process descriptions - documented description of each of the schedule management processes 

Source: PMBOK 5th ed.