How-To Build a Project Schedule

Introduction

After a project has been submitted, scoped, and approved you will be ready to start working on the project. To define the tasks that are required to complete a project, the project manager (PM) and project team should collaborate to define the list of tasks, also known as the project schedule.

Steps

To set up your project schedule:

1. Identify high-level milestones to start building a more detailed project schedule. You can use the "OIT WBS Worksheet Template" to document the analysis of the work.
2. Develop a list of tasks under each milestone subheading using the proposed and planned dates defined for the project as a starting point. 
   • A project plan template is available to use as a guide when building your project schedule. It is available in the files section of this article. Project plan tasks should be customized according to project type. 
   • The PM should work collaboratively with all project team members to develop this task list. 
3. The PM should then assign a start and end date for each task, along with assigning a resource responsible for completing the work.
4. Once a first draft of the project schedule is built, the PM should review this schedule with the entire project team and stakeholders.
5. Team members should confirm the list of tasks assigned to them and that the due dates are not conflicting with other work. 

Conclusion

This article describes how to build a project schedule, using the project plan template. The target audience is all employees fulfilling the project manager role on a project. 

This can become the basis for your project plan on your project within TeamDynamix.