This course is a result of 25 years of consulting project and portfolio management experience, including scheduling exercises on major projects. We will start this course with a brief overview of project manager’s responsibilities and the role of the schedule management plan in the overall project plan. We will then focus on the key steps of the schedule management process including Activity Definition, Activity Sequencing, Activity Resource Estimating, Activity Duration Estimating, Schedule Development and Schedule Control.

We will then examine Schedule Development tools and techniques including software used, Activity Sequencing (Precedence diagramming method (PDM) and Arrow diagramming method (ADM)) and Activity Duration Estimation (Expert judgement, Analogous estimating (Top-Down), Engineering estimating (Bottom-Up) and Network Diagrams including PERT and Critical Path methods).

We will then focus on project schedule controls methodologies including Variance Analysis (i.e. comparison of Scheduled Time vs. Actual Time) and Earned Value Management (e.g. SV, SPI, EAC, ETC and VAC).

We will then discuss schedule variance tolerances and levels at which they will be tracked as well as several methods of Schedule Variance Response Process.

Subsequently we will discuss Project Schedule with the aid of real-life examples and Schedule Change Control Process including Schedule Control, Managing Schedule Changes through the Change Request document. Also, we will discuss assessing the impact of the change on the overall project.

Finally, you will be provided with an assignment to create your own Schedule Management Plan based on what you learned in the course (e.g. bathroom or kitchen renovation projects).