Time Management: Techniques and Scheduling During Execution

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Time Management: Techniques and Scheduling During Execution

Project Management · Chapter 8: Driving Project ExecutionSection 8.2 · lesson 45 of 7315 min · free with a free account

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In this lesson

Keeping the working schedule on track with look-aheads, commitments and buffers.

  • Distinguish the baseline schedule from the working schedule and explain the schedule gap
  • Build a rolling look-ahead schedule with owners, prerequisites and constraints
  • Apply readiness checks and timeboxing to decide short-interval commitments
  • Calculate buffer consumption against percent complete and interpret the result

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Transcript

Everything said in the video, section by section (2,267 words). Read along, or search it.

Opening Question

Losing Four Days at the Hand-Offs

Five activities run one after another, and each is planned to take four days. So the plan finishes on day twenty. Every activity takes exactly four days. Not one of them runs late. But at each of the four hand-offs, the next crew isn't ready, and a day is lost waiting. The project finishes on day twenty-four. No list of durations shows the problem, because the loss happened between the activities. This lesson is about catching that kind of loss while the work is being run: the working schedule, look-aheads, commitments, timeboxes, buffers and meetings.

Two Schedules

Baseline, Working Schedule and the Gap

Two schedules matter here. The baseline schedule is the approved version from planning, kept unchanged so progress can be measured against it. The working schedule is the one the team runs from day to day. It starts as a copy of the baseline. Then it's updated with actual starts and finishes, revised estimates of remaining work, new constraints, and the real availability of people, materials and space. The difference between where the baseline said the work would stand, and where the working schedule says it stands, is the schedule gap. A gap isn't proof of poor planning, because every estimate is a forecast. It becomes a problem when nobody is looking at it. And the baseline is never edited to hide a gap. It's the measuring stick, and changing it is a controlled step.

Look-Ahead Schedule

A Rolling Window of Upcoming Work

The first tool is a look-ahead schedule: a rolling window of the working schedule, covering the next few weeks. It's drawn from the baseline and corrected with current progress, so it shows what's really about to happen. The window is usually two to six weeks: long enough to clear slow obstacles like ordering a delivery, and short enough to stay reliable. It rolls. Every week, the finished week drops off the near end, and a new week is added at the far end. Each activity in it shows four things: its current start date, its single owner, its prerequisites, and its constraints. Prerequisites must exist before the work can begin, like a finished predecessor or an approval. Constraints limit when or how it may happen, like a curing period, or a shared space.

Step by Step

Six Steps to Build a Look-Ahead

Building one takes six steps. First, select every baseline activity in the window, plus anything unfinished from earlier weeks. Second, apply the progress facts: remove what's finished, use the remaining work the doers report, and move starts to dates that are now realistic. Third, attach an owner to each row. Fourth, test every prerequisite, and record plainly whether it's ready: yes or no. Fifth, write down the constraints. And sixth, give each row a status: ready, in progress, waiting, or at risk.

Worked Example

Sorting Not-Ready Rows by Urgency

Here's part of a look-ahead for a made-up bakery kitchen refit, at the start of week three of a seven-week project. Several rows have a prerequisite marked no. The skill is to sort those by how close they are. The floor screed is two days away, and its drain pressure test isn't signed off. The hood frame is five days away, and no lifting platform is booked. Those two are urgent, because only days remain to turn each no into a yes. The oven delivery is marked no only because its predecessor hasn't happened yet. That's expected so far ahead, so it's watched, not chased. Notice, too, that the screed's start is already two days later than the baseline. The baseline can't show that. The prerequisite column explains why.

Short-Interval Planning

Commit Only to Work That Is Ready

From the look-ahead come commitments. Short-interval planning draws weekly and daily commitments, and makes them only for work that's ready. A commitment is a named person's promise to do specific work in a short interval: the joiner will fit the prep room panels on Thursday. The weekly plan is made right after the look-ahead refresh. The daily plan is a ten to fifteen minute huddle, where each owner says what will finish today, and what's in the way. Work is pulled in by people who know whether they can do it, instead of pushed onto them from a plan drawn up weeks before. The test is the readiness check. Is the predecessor finished and accepted? Is the needed information, like a drawing or a decision, in hand? Are people with the right skills free for the whole interval? Are materials and equipment on site? Is the space clear, and access agreed? Are approvals or inspections done? A single no takes the activity out of the commitments, and the fix becomes an action with an owner and a date. And keep a small reserve of ready work, so a crew that's blocked unexpectedly can switch to something useful.

Quick Check

Tiles Arriving a Day Late

Quick check. On Monday, a tiling crew is penciled in for Wednesday. But the supplier has confirmed that the tiles will arrive on Thursday. Which readiness question fails? Pause, and decide. Materials on site. The tiles aren't there until Thursday, so the work can't start on Wednesday. So it stays out of this week's commitments, and the late delivery becomes an action with an owner and a date.

Timeboxing

Fitting Thirteen Person-Days Into Ten

Next, timeboxing: fix a block of time for a piece of work, then fit the scope to the block, instead of letting the time stretch until everything's done. A two-person team has a box of five working days, so its capacity is two times five: ten person-days. Six items wait in priority order: A three, B two, C two, D three, E two, F one. That's thirteen person-days. Thirteen minus ten is three too many. So the team commits to A, B, C and D, which fill exactly ten. E and F, three person-days together, go back to the waiting list with a note. It's decided before work starts, and nothing is silently dropped.

Healthy Practice

When Timeboxing Helps and Hurts

Timeboxing is healthy when the scope is ranked first, the box is respected, and what didn't fit is recorded. It's unhealthy when the box quietly stretches, or quality is cut without anyone deciding. One boundary: if fitting the box would remove something the approved scope promised, that's a scope change, and it goes through the formal route.

Two Views

Fix the Time or Fix the Scope

So which should stay fixed, time or scope? Those who fix time say a firm end date forces early priority decisions, exposes unrealistic wishes, and protects work that depends on the date. Those who fix scope say some deliverables are only useful complete, like a safety installation, and that cutting scope just moves the cost to later, and to someone else. Whether timeboxed work delivers more predictably, or simply delivers less, is a factual question that depends on the type of work. Which of time, scope and quality may vary is a question of what the sponsor values. This course takes no position.

Schedule Buffers

Reading Buffer Used Against Progress

A schedule buffer is time deliberately held in reserve, at the end of a path or before a milestone, to absorb delay so a committed date can hold. Buffer consumption is the share of that reserve already used up. It only means something when it's read against progress. Percent of buffer used is buffer days used, divided by total buffer days, times one hundred. Percent complete is planned work finished, divided by total planned work, times one hundred. Take a made-up parcel-hub fit-out with a ten-day buffer. At week five, half the planned work is done, and delay has used five and a half buffer days. That's five and a half over ten: fifty-five percent of the buffer used, at fifty percent complete.

Buffer Zones

Green, Amber and Red Thresholds

This organization's zones: green while buffer used is at most twenty, plus half the percent complete. Amber up to forty, plus six tenths of it. Red beyond that. At fifty percent complete, green ends at forty-five, and amber at seventy. So fifty-five is amber. Organizations set their own zones, and these aren't a standard.

Projection

When the Buffer Would Run Out

A reading can also be projected. Five and a half days, over fifty points of progress, is eleven hundredths of a day per point. At that pace, the whole job would use eleven days, one more than the buffer holds. It would run out at about ninety-one percent complete. Spending protection early is a warning, because the remaining work still carries its own uncertainty. A reading like this decides nothing alone. It tells the team to look at causes, to compress where the work allows, and to use the formal route if the date can't hold.

Hidden Loss

The Cost of Context Switching

Two behaviors eat schedule without appearing in any activity list. The first is multitasking: working on several tasks in one period by alternating between them. Context switching is the time lost each time attention moves from one task to another. Take two four-day tasks, A and B, and say each switch costs a quarter of a day. That's a made-up figure. One after the other: A finishes at day four, and B, after one switch, at day eight and a quarter. Alternating whole days makes seven switches. A finishes at seven plus six quarters, day eight and a half. B at eight plus seven quarters, day nine and three quarters. Both finish later than in sequence, and neither finishes early to make up for it. Finish time is working days, plus switches times the cost per switch. Some disagree: a task waiting on a delivery leaves its owner idle unless other work is picked up, and a coordinator has to respond quickly. Switching costs can be measured, case by case.

Hidden Loss

Student Syndrome and Late Starts

The second is student syndrome: starting a task as late as possible, so any margin in its estimate is spent before the work even begins. Then a problem found late has no room left to absorb it. The name comes from leaving an assignment until the night before. The behavioral view says deadline pressure is felt only as it nears, so late starts are a predictable habit, and design should work against them, for example with intermediate dates. The structural view says late starts are often reasonable. People juggle competing demands, early work gets thrown away when requirements change, and finishing early can just shrink the next estimate. Recorded actual starts can show how much lateness comes from late starts, rather than overruns. Whether managers should require early starts is a judgment, and no position is taken here.

Update Cadence

Matching Updates to Activity Length

How often should progress be gathered? The update cadence is the interval at which the working schedule is revised. A slip can go unnoticed for as long as one interval. So compare the interval with a typical activity in the look-ahead. If the cadence is longer than a typical activity, many activities start and finish between updates, and their problems surface afterward. A three-week community fair has one and two day tasks. A weekly update could miss a failed start for five working days, longer than the task. A short daily check fits. A ten-month hall build has activities of three to six weeks. A weekly update catches a one-day slip within a week, and daily updates would mostly repeat unchanged entries. So three rhythms stay distinct: the daily huddle, the weekly look-ahead refresh, and the periodic report to stakeholders. Revisit them when the pace changes.

Progress Capture

Remaining Work Beats Percent Complete

Each update needs progress capture: recording what actually happened to each activity. Three items: the actual start, the actual finish, and the remaining work, the owner's current estimate of what's still needed. Remaining work beats percent complete. Ninety percent done is a feeling that can sit unchanged for weeks. Two days left is an estimate you can test next week. The person doing the work records or confirms it, and the coordinator consolidates. If the coordinator guesses, the schedule becomes fiction. And progress must be checkable. Compare: wiring is about eighty percent done. With: circuits one to six of eight are tested and signed. Seven and eight remain, at about one and a half days. Only the second can be inspected and corrected. Each entry also carries its date and the name of whoever made it, so old information isn't mistaken for current.

Schedule Meetings

Decisions and Actions, Not Readouts

Finally, the schedule meeting: a brief, regular meeting to review the look-ahead, confirm readiness, and make decisions. It isn't for reading out reports. It follows a fixed agenda every time: last meeting's actions, progress in the window, readiness for next week, the buffer, obstacles needing a decision, and new actions. Attendees are the activity owners in the window, and anyone who can remove a constraint. Everyone else gets the notes. The cost is visible. Ten people for thirty minutes is five person-hours, and a fifteen-minute overrun adds two and a half more. Its value lives in the decision and action log: each decision, each action, its owner and due date, read first at the next meeting. Off-topic items go on a parking list. A problem for a small group goes to a working session, which solves one problem, unlike a status meeting, which shares progress.

Quick Check

Eight of Twelve Buffer Days Used

Quick check, with the same zones as the parcel hub. A different project has a twelve-day buffer. It's twenty-five percent complete, and has used eight buffer days. Which zone is it in? Pause, and decide. Red. Eight over twelve is about sixty-seven percent of the buffer used. At twenty-five percent complete, green ends at thirty-two and a half, and amber at fifty-five. Sixty-seven is beyond both, with three quarters of the work still ahead.

Key Takeaways

Watching the Gap During Execution

To recap: the working schedule drifts from the baseline, often at the hand-offs, unless someone watches the gap. A rolling look-ahead, with owners and yes-or-no prerequisites, exposes trouble days before it starts. Commit only to work that passes the readiness check, and fit scope to a timebox when time is fixed. Read buffer use against progress, and capture progress as remaining work that can be checked.

About Project Management at UPI Study

Project Management (Business 230) is a self-paced online course of 73 video lessons in 12 chapters, from starting and defining a project to planning, budgets, scheduling tools, proposals, contracts, execution, monitoring, closure, teams and certification. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.

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Universities that work with NCCRS

Project Management carries a NCCRS credit recommendation. These universities work with NCCRS; some are UPI Study's signed partners. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.

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FAQ

Questions students ask us

About Time Management: Techniques and Scheduling During Execution

What is a look-ahead schedule in project management?
A look-ahead schedule is a rolling window of the working schedule, usually two to six weeks, drawn from the baseline and corrected with current progress. Each activity shows its current start date, single owner, prerequisites and constraints. Each week the finished week drops off and a new one is added, exposing problems such as an unbooked lifting platform while there is still time to act.
How is schedule buffer consumption calculated and interpreted?
Percent of buffer used is buffer days used divided by total buffer days, times 100, and it is read against percent complete. A project with a 10-day buffer that has used 5.5 days at 50 percent complete has consumed 55 percent of its buffer. At that pace the whole job would need 11 days, so the buffer would run out at about 91 percent complete.
How does timeboxing work when planned work exceeds capacity?
Timeboxing fixes a block of time and fits the scope to it. A two-person team with five working days has 10 person-days of capacity. If six ranked items need 13 person-days, the team commits to the top items that fill 10 and returns the other 3 person-days of work to the waiting list with a note. Removing approved scope this way requires a formal scope change.
What is student syndrome in project scheduling?
Student syndrome is starting a task as late as possible, so the margin in its estimate is spent before work begins and a problem found late has no room to be absorbed. The behavioral view treats it as a predictable habit to counter with intermediate dates, while the structural view says late starts are often reasonable. Recorded actual start dates show how much lateness it explains.

About the Project Management course

How many college credits is Project Management?
Project Management (Business 230) carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities.
How much does Project Management cost and what is included?
$250, paid once, with lifetime access: all 73 video lessons, a practice quiz after each, the graded work and final exam, and an official transcript when you finish. Students who want several courses choose UPI Study PRO instead.
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UPI Study has signed partner agreements with universities such as Thomas Edison State University, University of the People and Charter Oak State College, and works with universities such as Penn State, SNHU and SUNY. ACE and NCCRS have over 2,100 cooperating colleges that will consider accepting credits; the final decision is with the universities. Use "Find my college" on this page to check yours.
How long does Project Management take?
It is self-paced with no deadlines. The 73 lessons total about 15 hours of video; most students add reading and practice time and finish in a few weeks to a few months, on their own schedule.
How are the exams done?
Quizzes and assignments are online in the course. The final exam is taken online with proctoring; a person on the UPI Study team checks assignments, usually within two days.
How do my credits reach my college?
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