Every project has a time limit. But the time in which it will be realised is almost impossible to predict with 100% accuracy. It will depend partly on external factors and risks, and partly on internal ones.
In the following, we will look in detail at the possibility of managing the duration of a project.
Is it possible to manage the time of projects?
In business, time is a resource. And not only can it be managed, it must be. Effective planning techniques, business frameworks, management methodologies (top 10), task control and task accounting systems, metrics, BPM, ERP, CRM systems and more are created for this very purpose. All of these are components of the management system designed to ensure that the original plans are implemented with a high degree of accuracy and strict adherence to deadlines.
Yes, it is difficult to foresee all the risks and potential problems in projects, especially when working in a niche that is new to the company. The accuracy of planning will be lower than in the stable business processes of a company, although force majeure can occur at any time. Absolute accuracy is generally very difficult to achieve.
Therefore, project planning should describe and plan for all risks in detail (more about risk management) and make provisions for problems (explicit and implicit, probable and improbable). To move in the right direction and create the right product, it is important to identify the expectations of customers, owners and other stakeholders (more about managing stakeholder expectations).
What is the difference between time management and project duration management?
Time management is more of a general concept, an approach that says that time should be managed. And if you do it right, you can manage more time and increase your efficiency, the efficiency of your department and the efficiency of the whole company.
Is it great? Yes, it is. But duration management is about something else. It is a specific process or activity that can be incorporated into the different phases of a project. The main task is to predict or determine the actual duration of the project, taking into account the available characteristics (external and internal factors).
How teams set project timelines
The term ‘team’ is used here for a reason. The point is that the word of a project manager alone may not be enough. The team can work without a manager; in the team, the manager has slightly different functions than in classical management theory (setting tasks, controlling, providing). Of course, they are still present, but they are more nominal for the team.
But that is not what we are talking about here. When a client or customer sets a task for a project, they usually expect adequate feedback: what resources and investments will be required from them, how long they will have to wait for the result, how the work will be done, what can be optimised and what can be abandoned, what the consequences will be, and much more.
The team cannot predict the outcome of the project with a high degree of accuracy if it has no experience of the work involved. Neither resource nor time costs can be estimated if there are no accumulated statistics.
This is why many start-ups fail before they even reach the finish line. The point is that, due to lack of experience, deadlines are given that are not based on anything, as experienced investors would say — ‘off the top of their heads’.
But what if almost every project is new? That is, there is no substantial experience on it and cannot be… How do you plan the work and set reasonable deadlines?
The trick is to plan properly.
How to properly manage the duration of a project?
It is impossible to give a universal recipe that will work for all projects without exception. But we will try.
In order to properly estimate the time needed to complete a project, you need to:
- Define the main models of the final product. Ideally, it is necessary to identify the minimum possible configuration (MVP, minimum viable product), the optimum and the maximum (with all the customer’s wishes fulfilled).
- Each model should be broken down into tasks and subtasks.
- For each task, calculate the time, labour and financial investment required (preferably with justification).
- Create a network schedule for the implementation of tasks. This will help track which tasks can be done in parallel, where there are bottlenecks, where third party contractors, suppliers, etc. will be required.
- Identify risks and factor them into the overall project plan (e.g. how much the implementation time may increase, how long it will take to resolve problems, what losses or investments may be involved, etc.).
- Summarise the total time for each scenario.
As a result, you will at least get pessimistic and optimistic forecasts that you are not ashamed to show to the customer, and the time indicated will be as close to real time as possible.
The undeniable advantage of this approach is that the client knows the main options for the development of events and is prepared in advance for the fact that, in case of difficulties, he will have to wait a little longer or spend extra money to solve the problems.
Advanced project time management techniques
As mentioned above, the above approach cannot be a one-size-fits-all approach. There will always be projects with specific characteristics that increase the complexity of planning. It is therefore better to take a more scientific approach.
The most common methods are described below.
- Critical Path (CPM). A very flexible and popular method for planning tasks and project schedules. The set of actions is similar to the algorithm above: you make a list of all tasks, break them down into components if necessary, define dependencies between tasks and make a network schedule. The duration of the tasks is estimated based on experience, expertise, expert judgement or industry standards (if available). Task movements can be forward or backward. A special algorithm (relay race method) is used to calculate the maximum duration of each project arc in the network diagram (this is the longest path, i.e. the critical path).
- Critical Chain (CCPM). It is most effective for projects with strictly limited resources. It is very similar to the Critical Path method, except that time resources by task are taken out of the schedule in a separate block (removed from tasks, narrowing manoeuvres in case of problems), and project resources are put in the centre of attention, i.e. links between tasks are evaluated by them. And to optimise schedules, all possible variants of critical paths are tried until the best approach is found, without reference to the desired order of tasks (in case you’ve missed something or haven’t considered it).
- Resource levelling. This method is mentioned in the PMBOK Guide. It involves resolving conflicts in resource requests. Planning should consider the balance between supply and demand (availability) of resources. The calculation methods themselves can be arbitrary. The main objective is to ensure that there are enough resources for all stakeholders. If there are several projects and resources are limited, individual tasks may be left idle. The purpose of the levelling method is to correct such bottlenecks.
- ‘Monte Carlo’ (what if). In general, this is a whole group of mathematical methods used to determine random variables. The main idea is to generate different variants (simulation) and find the most frequent (probable) outcome by statistical analysis. The final results of the Monte Carlo scheduling method are always given with the probability of getting them, i.e. there may be several other variants with lower probabilities. The method is also effective for analysing project risks.
- Schedule Compression. The main goal of the method is to reduce the final project time. But everything comes at a price. In the case of schedule compression, it is an increase in the cost of additional resources (automation tools, third parties, outsourcing, parallelisation of tasks, etc.). In order to evaluate the efficiency of investments, several compression variants are created and offered to the customer. The effect is somewhat reminiscent of a popular joke: ‘Fast, quality, cheap. Choose any two values».
- PERT (Project Evaluation and Review Team). The most flexible method for working with projects with a high degree of uncertainty, suitable for very large and complex projects. It includes a detailed algorithm for finding the critical path. Different execution intervals are set for each task: optimistic, most likely and pessimistic. Network diagrams, Gantt charts or graphs are used as visualisation tools.
- GERT (Graphical Estimation Technique). Slightly more complex network plans for planning tasks involving flowchart elements (‘AND’, ‘OR’, ‘without OR’).
Instead of conclusions
As you can see, although there are many approaches to estimating project time, the principles for many of them are very similar: planning elements are tasks with deadlines, and different combinations of tasks can result in different resulting time costs.
And to improve the accuracy of the schedule, you need either experience or an appropriate independent assessment of the work or investment. As the final diagram (network diagram) is very large, it is advisable to use specialised project management software such as Projecto.
