Time Management
Time management is set of procedures to plan, monitor and control time spent on project tasks and activities.
Time management planning results in the creation of the Project Schedule. To go from the WBS to the Schedule a useful device is a Network Diagram used to visualize the relationship among tasks. As some tasks must be executed before others, we call these prerequisites as predecessors.
The network diagram or PERT chart (Program Evaluation Review Technique) is a tool the project manager uses to create a graphical representation of the project work and identify: (1) total project duration and (2) the critical path.
It is part of the “cuisine” of project management, the background work that needs to be done but is of little value for others. We generally don’t show it to other stakeholders unless we are working on ways to compress the schedule so we can negotiate opportunities for Fast-Tracking or Crashing. Ideally less dependencies between tasks represent more freedom to rearrange them.
The different techniques you should be aware of are the following:
