Don't Set it and Forget It: Update Your Project Schedules Throughout Your Projects
While reading Project Scheduling and Cost Control, by James Taylor, one thing that stuck out for me was how it is critical to update a project’s schedule no matter what type of network diagram or chart you decide to employ. It never really struck me as an issue because I haven’t worked on “huge” time consuming projects, and if I have, I was normally the only resource available for the project so everything was done fairly sequentially.
When managing larger projects, I can see how tasks may be finished earlier than expected or later. Without keeping track of when these dates change, you won’t be able to accurately schedule the following tasks. It would also make crashing the project much harder because you wouldn’t know the status of all of your tasks and if they are complete or not so you wouldn’t know how much time you could save, if any.
Many projects have financial implications tied to the due dates. For example, a company may get a $1.5M bonus for finishing an electric plant 6 months early, or they may be penalized and legally responsible for any lost profits for not finishing a refinery on time. Being able to tell the status of a project and each of it’s tasks is vital in knowing the overall health and agenda of a project. One easy visual way to keep track of such information is by using a Gantt chart which presents massive amounts of data in a simple, easy to read chart.