Project Schedules

Introduction

Most projects that are going to last more than a couple of days need some sort of planning, and when a project manager needs to consider other ongoing projects, hourly requirements, and personal assignments for the team, it’s helpful to see it laid out clearly.

Problem

In the professional world, projects span months, if not years, and therefore must be kept on track. This requires a plan, a way to track progress, and a way to assign tasks. For a project manager, the Gantt chart is the perfect solution. This shows the schedule for a project, the work load defined by hours, and the team members that are assigned to which task, and when. The goal is that the Gantt chart should be easily referenced and understood so that individual contributors can work autonomously without being told their responsibilities each day. In this project, the task was to plan out the process of how to create a website for a client.

Role

For my team of four members, I created this chart after holding a team meeting to discuss the project requirements and goals. My job would have been project manager in this position, which was fitting as I had the most personal experience planning and executing on website builds in the past.

Process

Being that a Gantt chart is a common project management tool, a template could have been used here, but if time allows, I prefer to create from scratch so that I understand the functionality of every piece of the product, as well as how and what I might improve upon. I needed to first understand the project’s requirements, including research, budget, and product review. After this, I needed to break down the timeline for the weeks ahead. After this, It was time to list every part of the project on its own line, then decide with the team who would work on which task. To polish the document off, I added some metrics in the legend by utilizing Sheet formulas.

Media

Final Product

Lessons Learned

This project taught me to take a step back from the current task to look at the project as a whole. It’s important to see not only the product that needs building, but time needs to be spent on studying the audience as well as reviewing the product before release, so this must be accounted for in the timeline.

Next Steps

After creating a document like this, the project would officially begin. Individual contributors would take their tasks and work on them so that the whole project moves forward with team members only focusing on their own work.