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For the Plan Schedule Management, there is only one output, the Schedule Management Plan.    It essentially gives guidelines on how to do the other processes related to schedule management.    I list each possible component as given by the 6th Edition PMBOK® Guide, together with the schedule management process it relates to most closely.

Schedule Management Plan

6.2 Define Activities

• Organizational procedures links–how will the work breakdown structure (WBS) be used to further decompose the project work into the activities needed to produce the work packages specified in the WBS?

6.3 Sequence Activities

• Project schedule model development–the scheduling methodology (for example, Critical Path Method) and the scheduling tool (for example, Microsoft Project) to be used in developing the project schedule model are specified.    When PMI talks about the project schedule model, just think of the project schedule.   The word “model” is added by PMI to make sure you know that it is not written in stone:   it may change if the assumptions that created it change based on newly discovered or recently changed information about the project.

6.4 Estimate Activity Durations

• Level of accuracy–what is the acceptance range used in determining realistic activity duration estimates
• Units of measure–what will be the units of measurement for measuring time (staff hours, or some other unit)

6.5 Develop Schedule

• Release and iteration length–if you are using an adaptive of agile life cycle, you need to specify the time-boxed periods for releases (phases of the project), and iterations of a release:  usually this is a 2 or 4-week cycle, but it needs to be specified and it needs to be consistent.

6.6  Control Schedule

• Project schedule model maintenance–the process used to update the status and record process of the project in the schedule model
• Rules of performance measurement–how will earned value measurement be used to monitor the schedule
• Control thresholds–variance thresholds for monitoring schedule performance, so that some action will be needed to be taken if the performance (based on the rules of performance measurement specified in the previous paragraph) varies beyond a certain threshold
• Reporting formats–in what format, with what frequency, and to whom will reports about the progress on the schedule be made?

With those frameworks and guidelines specified in the Schedule Management Plan, it’s time to start putting together the schedule for the particular project you are working on.  We start with the next process 6.2 Define Activities, which is the subject of the next post.

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