Basics of Project Scheduling

Being able to create an effective Project Schedule is the first step to being able to manage a Project effectively. Creating an effective Project Schedule requires deep knowledge of the work involved. However, knowing the work involved is not sufficient if the method to create a Project Schedule is not known.

This course starts from the very beginning where we assume that we have a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and thus we know the activities involved in a Project and the amount of time we require for each activity. From this stage, we go step-by-step to create a Project Schedule using Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM). In brief, we discuss the essential of PDM. We draw the network for the Project Schedule and compute the Project Duration.  Then, we learn to identify the Critical Path. We discuss essential terms like Early Start, Early Finish, Late Start, Late finish and Total Float. We discuss the meaning behind each term.

We round up the course discussing some risks to the Project we can identify from the Project Schedule and how to mitigate these risks.