Scheduling Practices

Project Description
Construction of a house
Activities are (Duration in parenthesis)

Paint the house (5 d)

House Warming Ceremony (1d)
Lay foundation (10 d)
Lay the roof (1 d)
Lay flooring (5d)
Build walls (20d)
Invite people for House Warming (1d)

Lets add some tweaks

Because of a new tax rule, you want to finish laying foundation before
Mar 31
Because of inauspicious timing, house warming ceremony can happen

Intuitive Scheduling Approaches

MS Excel or other spreadsheet
Tasks happen in a sequence for the most part
Dependencies are resolved manually
Duration based scheduling

Excel sheets for Project Management

05-Mar-16 10-Mar-16 15-Mar-16 20-Mar-16 25-Mar-16 30-Mar-16 04-Apr-16 09-Apr-16 14-Apr-16 19-Apr-16 24-Apr-16 29-Apr-16 04-May-16
D5

D10

D15

D20

D25

D30

D35

D40

D45

D50

D55

D60

D65

Lay Foundation

Build Walls 1

Lay the Roof

Build walls 2

Lay flooring

Paint the house

Invite people for house

warming

House warming ceremony

Tricks of the Trade

Identify Constraints

Start-No-Earlier-Than
Finish-No-Earlier-Than
Start-No-Later-Than
Finish-No-Later-Than

Identify Overlaps

Finish-to-Start
Start-to-Start
Finish-to-Finish
Start-to-Finish (JIT Scheduling)
Leads and Lags

Set Milestones

Tricks of the Trade (Cont)

Effort based scheduling
Critical Path Method
Critical Chain Method
GERT
Baselining and Earned Value Management