The plan schedule management process is very important to be able to deliver products and services on time to customers. The accuracy of meeting customer expectations does not happen in a bubble.
Customers will quite often request products or services to companies that they respect. The goal of any business is to be the best value for each customer. One of the ways to do this is to appropriately manage budgets to avoid cost over-runs.
In the last article, we covered how to schedule staff using Time Clock Wizard. In this article, we will cover project planning. Knowing what to do for scheduling will help your business become more organized.
What is Project Scheduling?
Project scheduling is a part of total project management. This is a detailed list of a particular project’s activities, deliverables and milestones.
It is a good idea to have a start and end date for each project; with that in mind remember that bottlenecks happen, so be flexible with date allocations.
What is a Plan Schedule Management Process?
In order to bring innovative ideas into reality, there is a process that you should follow. There are many ways to get to your end goals depending on the size, technical difficulty, resources available and willing employees for each project.
Here are different types of project management systems:
- PM Methodologies
- Agile
- Waterfall
- Scrum
- Rapid Applications Development
- New Product Introduction
- Get Things Done
- 5s Methodology
- Packaged Enable Re-Engineering
- Bullet Method
- PRINCE2
- Kanban
- Kondo Method
- Six Sigma
- DMAIC
- Outcome Mapping
A lot of managers have not taken the time to research these various kinds of systems. There are some systems that just use paper and pencil while other methods are software-driven. Find out how to create a schedule online with Time Clock Wizard.
If you want a simple system, then Kanban is the winner. If you have a lot of projects to do at once, then the Scrum method might work better for your team. When your goal is improving customer satisfaction, then six sigma is your best project plan.
What is a Project Schedule Good for?
The project schedule helps managers organize resource allocation (including having enough employees to do the tasks), budget (avoiding overages and overtime), duration of tasks, specific events (pre-launch) and all dependencies.
Another key factor for creating a project schedule is to communicate the chain of command for every given project. This ability to delegate tasks to middle management will free up time for upper management to pursue strategic partnerships.
Project Planning and Scheduling with Time Clock Wizard
One of the really nice features of Time Clock Wizard is that you can easily move employee schedules as needed for your projects. The scheduler within Time Clock Wizard allows you to email your employees about schedule changes.
Employees will be able to easily look online at their schedule the night before a shift. This will free up time for both employees and managers. Employees will also be able to switch shifts with each other so there is no confusion who is supposed to work.
Another feature is the forecasting section. This will allow you to see if your proposed schedule is under- or over-staffed. It is good to know when to avoid overtime charges.
Shift Planning for Projects
When a plan is put to a schedule, the task become manageable in sections. It is important to point out that planning for extra shifts in the beginning of the project will give wiggle-room toward the end of the project.
No matter the method of task planning and schedule management you choose, Time Clock Wizard makes shift planning changes easier than traditional workload management. In fact, workload management software is becoming as much of a staple to business as staplers.
Right now, you can try out Time Clock Wizard for free.
