What is Time Management in Project Management?
Time management is the management of the time spent, and progress made, on project tasks and activities. Excellent time management requires the planning, scheduling, monitoring, and controlling of all project activities. Time management is one of the six major functions of project management, according to the Project Management Institute. When some people refer to project time management, they’re also referring to the tools and techniques used for managing time.
Why is time management important in project management?
A project, by definition, has an official end date. In order to meet this date, every project needs a schedule and to manage their own time and the team’s time to ensure that the schedule is met. Imagine you decide to renovate a bathroom in your house. You figure you’ll do it in your spare time, so you don’t give yourself an end date or create a project schedule. You also don’t do anything to make sure you regularly have time to work on the renovation.
What happens? If you’re like most people, the answer is that years go by and your ‘project’ never gets finished.
Likely it is faced with constant delays, and you may run into the following issues:
- You felt too busy to work on it, so you pushed it to the back of your to-do list
- You didn’t order the new tiles in time and had to wait for them to come in
- You weren’t able to find a plumber and couldn’t install the sink or toilet after they were delivered
- You found out too late that inspections need to be booked months in advance
- And so on
That’s why time management is so critical. Without it, projects won’t get done on time, and may not get done at all.
The seven main processes in project time management
- Plan schedule management: Many resources don’t mention this process when discussing time management. But, before you can complete the other steps, you need to plan how you will manage your schedule. Some questions you should answer are: What software or tool will you use? Who will be responsible for using the software? How often will the schedule be reviewed? What controls will be put in place to ensure everyone stays on schedule?
- Define activities: Once you have your time management plan, you can identify and define your project activities. Often a work breakdown structure (WBS) is used to help define activities and tasks within a project. Major milestones should also be determined.
- Sequence activities: Now that you know all of the tasks that must be completed, you can start sequencing them in the proper order with a network diagram.
- Estimate resources: In project management, the term ‘resources’ often refers to people. However, you also need to identify which tools, materials, systems, budget, and other resources you will need for each task to be completed.
- Estimate durations: Once you know which tasks must be completed and what you need to accomplish them, it’s time to estimate how long it will take to complete each activity. Some project managers use PERT (Program Evaluation Review Technique) to come up with their durations, especially if there’s a lot of unknown factors at play.
- Develop the project schedule: This can be done by inputting your activities, durations, start and end dates, sequencing, and relationships into a scheduling software.
- Control the schedule: Once your schedule is created, it needs to be monitored and controlled. Progress needs to be reviewed and updated on a regular basis so you can compare your actual work completed against the plan. This allows you to see if there are areas you’re falling behind schedule.
Further reading:
- Project Management Basics: 6 Steps to a Foolproof Project Plan
- How 5 PM Experts Create a Fail-Safe Project Management Plan
- How to Keep Employees on Track with a Time Management Calendar
- 4 Tips to Improve Your Time Management this Holiday Season
- Stress-Free Reporting with Scheduled Report Reminders
0 Exact answers 0 Text answers 256 Multiple-choice answers
You’re managing a project, when your client tells you that an external problem happened, and now you have to meet an earlier deadline. Your supervisor heard that in a situation like this, you can use schedule compression by either crashing or fast-tracking the schedule, but he’s not sure which is which. What do you tell him?
You are managing a software project. Your QA manager tells you that you need to plan to have her team start their test planning activity so that it finishes just before testing begins. But other than that, she says it can start as late in the project as necessary. What’s the relationship between the test planning activity and the testing activity?
You’re managing an industrial design project. You’ve come up with the complete activity list, created network diagrams, assigned resources to each activity, and estimated their durations. What’s the next thing that you do?
Which of the following is NOT an input to Develop Schedule?
Three members of your project team want to pad their estimates because they believe there are certain risks that might materialize. What is the BEST way to handle this situation?
Which of the following tools is used for adding buffers to a schedule?
You’re managing an interior decoration project, when you find out that you need to get it done earlier than originally planned. You decide to fast-track the project. This means:
You’re managing a construction project. You’ve decomposed work packages into activities, and your client needs a duration estimate for each activity that you come up with. Which of the following will you use for this?
What’s the correct order of the Time Management planning processes?
Which of the following is NOT a tool or technique used in Estimate Activity Durations?
You’re managing a project to build a new project management information system. You work with the team to come up with an estimate of 27 weeks. In the best case, this could be shortened by two weeks because you can reuse a previous component. But there’s a risk that a vendor delay could cause the project to be delayed by five weeks. Use PERT to calculate a three-point estimate for this project.
You’re managing a software project, when your customer informs you that a schedule change is necessary. Which is the BEST thing to do?
Your company has previously run other projects similar to the one you’re currently managing. What is the BEST way to use that information?
You’re planning the schedule for a highway construction project, but the final date you came up with will run into the next budget year. The state comes up with capital from a reserve fund, and now you can increase the budget for your resources. What’s the BEST way to compress the schedule?
You’re managing a software project. You’ve created the schedule, and you need to figure out which activities absolutely cannot slip. You’ve done critical path analysis, identifying the critical path and calculating the early start and early finish for each activity. Which activities cannot slip without making the project late?