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.
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Project Phase/Activity
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Completed By
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INITIATION
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Project Charter
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12-Sep-2009
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Kick-off Meeting
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20-Sep-2009
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PLANNING
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Project Plan
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30-Oct-2009
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Requirements Document(s)
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20-Oct-2009
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EXECUTION
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Activity 1
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15-Nov-2009
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Activity 2, etc.
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20-Nov-2009
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Note: All dates provided are +/- 2 weeks
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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.
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Project Quality Management
