Project Scheduling is a key feature in any good project management software. This ensures operational planning, personnel and organizational resource allocation and even governance management. Project scheduling enables a foresight into the future contingencies as well as helps in eliminating process redundancies.
Prior to scheduling, comes the planning phase, where the resources required for the project as well as the processes are set after consultation with tower heads. Further to this step, comes project scheduling. During this phase, Gantt chart a graphical interpretation of schedule to plan & coordinate is drawn out as to how the acquired resources as well as personnel are to be deployed. This stage also helps in deducing critical path as well as longest route to completion of a certain project. And finally, the project it keyed on.
Since the bulk of the procedures and resource allocation happens during this project scheduling phase in project management, it is only imperative to understand the importance of the same. And while every project will derive benefits of project scheduling in its own specific way, following are a few common merits of the same:
Better Productivity: With proper dependencies between activities, the predecessor activities can be easily tracked so that work does not get stopped/delayed for successor activities.
Team Collaboration: With proper Project scheduling, team collaboration can be done to drive better result and amplify the productivity amongst the organization. Collaboration not only boosts integration of different activities, but allows manager to get complete visibility over the progress of projects and activity status.
Contingency Planning: As mentioned before project scheduling doles out critical insight about probable diversions taking historical evidence into consideration. This allows the project manager to deliver the targets effectively and efficiently.
Balanced Resource Allocation: Balanced resource appropriation is one of the key benefits of project scheduling. As the allocation of resources prior the initiation of project is done and dusted with, each team is set with its own resources and budgets. This enables teams to collaborate better and deliver quality quicker.
Project Delivery in Time: With Critical path being highlighted, any potential delays in the key deliverables can be easily identified. The materials with more lead time can be identified and ordered early.
Therefore, just as the popular saying goes; if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. On that note, project scheduling is an integral component of any project management software.
