The Schedule Management Plan is one of the subsidiary plans of the Project Management Plan. It outlines the approach for developing, monitoring, and controlling the project schedule.

Developing the Schedule Management Plan is a planning process that drives decisions that are needed when we set up our Microsoft Project environment and initiate our schedule.

Although not every project will need all of the identified elements, each one should be considered and thought through as part of the planning process. Documenting those elements that are relevant to your project allows all team members and stakeholders to have a clear vision for how scheduling related functions will be performed on the project.

You may have Company standards for some or all of these elements.

Roles and Responsibilities – Who is responsible for:

• Building the schedule – Defining, estimating, and linking tasks, and identifying and assigning resources.
• Approving the scheduling – Once the schedule is built, does someone need to approve it?
• Approving baselining – Who decides when the schedule is ready to be baselined?
• Statusing the schedule – Who is responsible for updating the schedule?
• Approving changes to the schedule – During execution, who authorizes and approves revisions to the schedule?

Baseline Process – What are the requirements for baselining?

We want to set a baseline on our project to enable us to:

• Assess our performance during execution and see when we start to get off track.
• Improve future estimating accuracy by comparing our original plan to our actual performance at the end of the project.

In the schedule management plan, you should document:

• The processes, timing, and approvals that are needed to set the baseline.
• The conditions under which the project may be rebaselined, and the process for performing a rebaseline.

Schedule Update Process – Document the who, what, when, and how of applying schedule progress.

• Who is providing the status information? – Will it come from individual team members, task owners, team leads, or someone else?
• What information is needed? – This will depend on how you are statusing and at what level of detail?  Are you statusing at the task level or are you statusing at the resource assignment level.
• When – frequency of updates? – In most organizations statusing is usually performed weekly, but your cycle may be different  Some projects have only monthly update requirements, and some may have daily update requirements for some period of time during the project.
• How is the information submitted? – Will the team leads submit excel files, will the team get together in a meeting to incorporate updates into the schedule, etc.?

Change and Review Process

Projects never end up being executed exactly as originally planned. The Change Process must be documented:

• Who is responsible for identifying and analyzing a potential change to the project? Too often, changes get automatically absorbed into the project, causing what is called ‘Scope creep‘. Scope creep is the expansion of project or product scope, without adjustments to time, cost, or resources. Scope creep is a major cause of projects not completing successfully. If someone (often the PM) has the responsibility for identifying and analyzing potential changes, potential changes are more likely to get an appropriate level of scrutiny instead of just being agreed to.
• Who has the authority to approve changes? – Sometimes there is a maximum cost level that the PM can approve, and if the cost for the potential change is over that, it goes to the Sponsor.
• What are the steps needed for documentation, analysis and approval?

Control Thresholds

Control thresholds identify the levels at which variances are analyzed and corrective action taken.

Not all variances should have corrective action taken. For example, if you have a year long project, and your current plan shows the project completing two months before the due date, it may not make sense to spend the time or money to analyze a variance of 2 days.

Your thresholds can change during the life cycle of the project.

Naming and Versioning Conventions

Naming conventions should be documented for the project. This should include project names, as well as the naming of any versions of your project that you plan to save.

You should also include details about the versioning process itself. Some people like to save a copy of the project weekly after statusing. The frequency and responsibility for the versioning process should be documented.

Calendar Requirements

A project calendar needs to be identified. This is the default work schedule for your project. In your Schedule Management Plan you should describe what that calendar is going to be.

** Best Practices:

If possible, use the default Standard calendar that comes with Microsoft Project as your project calendar and add your company holidays. The Standard calendar gets assigned automatically to brand new projects and this way you don’t constantly have to remember to change it for new projects that you create.

You may need additional calendars if you have some tasks that are being worked on a different schedule.  For example, maybe you have some special testing tasks that run 6 days a week. You would define an additional calendar with a 6 day work week and assign that calendar to those specific tasks. This is covered in detail in a future section.

Task and Milestone Coding

You may also establish a task coding structure that enables you to develop, maintain, and analyze your schedule, as well as to provide reporting for your stakeholders. Tasks may utilize multiple code fields for different purposes, e.g., department, phase, geographic location, business unit, and task owner.

Resource Planning Process

Will you manage resources in your project? Some organizations do strictly task management and don’t manage resources at all.

If you will manage resources in your schedule, will you use Generic Resources like Design Engineer, Graphic Artist, etc., Named Resources like John Smith and Susan Jones, or both.

Reports

Do you have specific standard reports required by your customer, sponsor, or organization, that you will be producing for your project?

Tools and Usage

Are there other tools that you will be using in combination with your schedule?  Do you have a need to output pert chart diagrams, or run risk analysis on your schedule? If so, you will likely use add-on software that works with Microsoft Project.

Integration Requirements

Are there other organizational systems, e.g., a cost management system, that data will need to be integrated with?

_________________________________________________________________________

Materials are based on the Project Management Institute, A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge, (PMBOK® Guide) 7th Edition, Project Management Institute, Inc., 2021

PMBOK is a registered mark of the Project Management Institute, Inc.