Project Time Management
Project time management is one of the nine major principles in the PMBOK (Project Management Body Of Knowledge), which is compiled and maintained by the PMI (Project Management Institute), the worldwide certification and standards-setting body for project management professionals. It is vital for every PMP (Project Management Professional) to understand and adhere to best practices for project time management.
Project time management involves the definition of activities (what are we going to do?), the sequencing of activities (in what order are we going to do them?), and the development and control of the schedule (when are we going to start and finish each activity?). Project management time management is critical to the successful completion of any project on time, within budget, and with acceptable quality.
The overall management of a project and time management blend seamlessly. Managing a project is essentially about the management of activities and the times in which they are to be completed. The project management plan will help specify the activities to be performed, which could be pouring concrete or writing the user interface portion of a software package. Then things become all about time management.
Sequencing the various activities involved in a project is the next step. You can't pour concrete before digging a foundation and lining it with wooden planks. Likewise, you can't write a user interface program before you have other software modules for the user to interface with. Each activity must be carefully considered in light of its effect on other activities, and activities which provide input or foundations for other activities must be placed earlier in the sequence. Note that at this point, we are only determining the order in which things will be done. Next comes deciding when each activity will be done.
One must determine the amount of time that it will take to complete each activity. Then you can approach scheduling from one of two directions. You can start at the deadline -- the date in the future by which the entire project must be completed -- and schedule the start of each activity backwards from there. Or you can say, "Let's start tomorrow and see when we will finish." Then it's just a matter of assigning completion times to each activity, adding them all up, and arriving at the completion date.
Project time management software aids in exactly these sorts of calculations, linking of activities in time lines, and summing up of all the required times in a series of interdependent activities to see when a project can be completed.