TABLE OF CONTENTS The aim of this chapter is to give you an understanding of what a schedule is and some practical guidance on how your schedule may be created and statused as part of a project.
A project is essentially a set of operations or activities to be completed in logical order. A schedule is an attempt to model these operations and their relationships. These operations take time to accomplish and may employ resources that have limited availability.
Planning and scheduling software allows the user to:
Break a project down into discrete activities that are entered into the software as activities.
Nominate durations, predecessors and successors for activities and calculate the start and finish date of all the activities.
Assign resources (which represent people, equipment or materials) to the activities and calculate the project resource requirements.
Monitor the actual progress of activities against the original plan and amend the plan when required.
Monitor the consumption of resources and re-estimate the resources required to finish the project.
There are four modes or levels in which planning and scheduling software may be used:
| Planning | Tracking | |
|---|---|---|
| Without Resources | LEVEL 1 Planning without Resources. | LEVEL 2 Tracking progress without Resources. |
| With Resources | LEVEL 3 Planning with Resources. | LEVEL 4 Tracking progress with Resources. |
As the level increases, the amount of information required to maintain the schedule will increase and, more importantly, your skill and knowledge in using the software will increase. This book is designed to take you from...
