This Guest paper was submitted for publication and is copyright to Jamal Moustafaev, MBA, PMP, © 2013.
Published here August 2014.
The material has been abstracted from Jamal Moustafaev's forthcoming book on Project Scope Management.

Introduction | Quick Overall Outline | The Project Plan Contents
Overview and Recipient Stakeholders | Project Scope Management | Project Quality Management
Project Time Management - Schedule and Milestones | Project Cost Management - Budget
Project Risk Management | Project Human Resources Management
Project Procurement Management | Project Communications Management | Concluding Remarks

Project Time Management - Schedule and Milestones

Estimating Methodology

Briefly describe what approach was used to obtain the estimates (e.g. top-down, bottom-up, historical or expert judgment). Note that while at the Business Case or early Project Charter, a +75/-25% degree of precision was required, at the completion of the Project Plan the estimates should be at +30/-15%).

Project Duration

Indicate project duration in days, weeks, months or years, whatever is applicable to the size and the complexity of the project:

  • Plus-or-minus qualifiers – e.g. "6 months ± 2 months"
  • Ranges – e.g. "4 months to 8 months"
  • Cases – e.g. Best case – 4 months, Most likely – 6 months, Worst case– 8 months
  • Coarse dates and time periods – e.g. "3 Quarters" instead of "270 days"
  • Confidence factors – e.g. "We are 95% sure the project will be done in between 90 and 118 days

Project Milestones

Include key project milestones as shown in Figure 3. Provide +/- qualifiers for each date. The idea behind this table is that senior managers and customer are probably unlikely to examine complicated Gantt charts created in MS Project or other project management software. Thus, a list of key high-level milestone could be of great assistance in explaining the general schedule for the project in question in a user-friendly, easy-to-understand fashion.

Project Phase/Activity

Completed By

INITIATION

 

   Project Charter

12-Sep-2009

   Kick-off Meeting

20-Sep-2009

PLANNING

 

   Project Plan

30-Oct-2009

   Requirements Document(s)

20-Oct-2009

EXECUTION

 

   Activity 1

15-Nov-2009

   Activity 2, etc.

20-Nov-2009

Note: All dates provided are +/- 2 weeks

Figure 3: Table of milestone dated used in preparing a Gantt chart

If the project required a creation of a Gantt chart in Microsoft project or other project management software, include a link to the MS Project .mpp file. These files are probably unlikely to be reviewed by the business, non-technical stakeholders, but project management professionals at your organizations and technical team members of the project team may need to see a more detailed view of the schedule and specific tasks.

Project Quality Management  Project Quality Management

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