Operations – Management Library

September 16, 2022November 23, 2022

The Ultimate Guide to People Operations

People operations empower your employees to become productive and fulfilled in the workplace. It’s essential for you to invest time and effort in people ops because your workforce is the backbone of your business. Although the term “people operations” is relatively new, it’s a traditional concept that is closely related to human resources (HR).

What Is People Operations?

People operations is a business function that humanizes business operations to improve employee experience. This people management model boosts the work efficiency and job satisfaction of your staff members through training, engagement, and retention. In practical ways, it highlights the importance of your manpower, not merely as people who are paid to do tasks, but as valuable members of your organization.

The term “people operations” was coined by Laszlo Bock, formerly the Senior Vice President (SVP) of Google’s People Operations department from 2006 to 2016. Through his book Work Rules!, Bock popularized the concept of people ops in the tech industry and beyond. He motivated employers, not just to protect the self-serving interests of the company, but the best interests of the employees as well.

People Operations vs HR: What’s the Difference?

People operations and human resources (HR) are similar in some ways but are also different in crucial ways. Both people ops and HR are people management models. However, conventional HR departments focus on the welfare of the company as an organization, while people operations teams concentrate on the professional and personal well-being of individual employees.

Check out the chart below for an overview of the main differences between people ops and HR:

Purpose

Employee value enhancement

Compliance enforcement

Priority

Supporting existing manpower

Hiring new staff members

Employee Participation

Active

Passive

Company Coordination

Collaborative

Mostly independent

Problem-Solving

Proactive

Responsive

System

Employee database + Rewards system

Employee database

Style

Holistic

Limited

Purpose

The main purpose of a conventional HR department is to enforce compliance with company policies and minimize the liability of the organization. In contrast, the goal of the people operations team is to maximize the value of the staff members in a systematic way.

Priority

On one hand, the top priority of an HR team is to interview and hire new additions to the company to fill up job openings. On the other hand, the people ops department gives importance to providing professional support to current employees to reduce turnover rates within the organization.

Employee Participation

An HR department usually shares information with the staff members about the latest decisions made by the management which affect the whole company. However, the people operations team gives rank-and-file workers the chance to actively participate in decision-making processes through open discussions.

Company Coordination

In general, the HR team works independently on its tasks, only consulting with other departments whenever necessary. In comparison, the people ops department makes it a habit to collaborate with other teams within the company to keep tabs on the workers’ situation.

Problem-Solving

The HR department typically solves problems as they arise on a case-to-case basis. In contrast, the people operations team proactively implements innovations to improve operations and prevent work issues.

System

The HR team maintains an employee database by inputting the latest payroll data and professional information. In addition to this, the people ops department also builds a rewards system to inspire staff members to work hard and stay loyal to the company.

Style

Overall, an HR department follows traditional, limited protocols in supervising the manpower of a business. Even better, the people operations team employs a holistic, flexible style to enhance the work experience of all the employees.

If you are currently practicing the old-school HR approach in your business, you may consider transitioning to the modern people ops approach to make your business more staff-friendly and well-rounded.

What Do People Ops Workers Do?

The people operations department plays a pivotal role in helping employees reach their full potential within the company. Let’s discover what the duties of the team are and who leads the people ops workers.

What Is the Role of the People Ops Team?

The people operations department assists employees beginning from their hiring and onboarding, continuing throughout their stay with the company, and ending with their exit from the organization.

Here are some examples of the common responsibilities of people ops workers:

Facilitating the interview and onboarding procedures of new hires for a smooth transition
Granting all employees access to the tools and technology they need to be productive at their jobs
Ensuring that staff members receive health benefits and employment perks
Providing venues for career development and educational training to enhance the skills and knowledge of employees
Answering the questions of workers related to company policies and employment terms
Listening to suggestions and feedback of staff members and taking the necessary actions
Creating a rewards system to acknowledge employees with stellar work performance, commendable work ethics, and company loyalty
Promoting a sense of belonging for all staff members within the corporate community
Organizing events to engage employees and spark team spirit
Streamlining outmoded HR systems to enhance efficiency
Selecting the right payroll software that suits the requirements of the business
Monitoring HR metrics like hiring periods and turnover rates
Handling offboarding processes for exiting staff members
Increasing overall job satisfaction of current employees by considering them as internal customers

Who Leads the People Operations Department?

The people ops team is typically supervised by two key leaders within the department:

People Operations Director

The people operations director is the head of the people ops department. He or she creates or improves the people ops strategy while aligning it with the mission and values of the organization. The director collaborates with the managers of other departments to boost interoffice relations and resolve employee issues.

People Operations Manager

The people operations manager oversees the day-to-day work activities of the team. He or she makes sure that the department reaches its goal of supporting the employees of the company through onboarding, offboarding, compensation disbursement, benefits administration, time-off approval, event planning, and system improvements. Also, the manager serves as a bridge between the people ops workers and the executive management.

Under the leadership of the people ops director and manager, all the people ops workers in the department fulfill their individual tasks.

What Types of Organizations Need People Ops?

Most organizations can benefit from people operations, whether they are big or small, private or public. These are the various types of organizations that can create a people ops team or perform related practices:

Sole Proprietorship

A sole proprietorship, which is owned by a single individual, is one of the most basic forms of business. Due to its small size and budget, it typically doesn’t have a separate people ops department or a dedicated employee to handle this function. However, sole proprietors can still apply people ops principles on a small-scale level to motivate their employees.

Partnership

A partnership is formed by two or more owners who agree to run the business together. It may have a people ops team or not, depending on the size and resources of the organization. Either way, all the active partners should coordinate on how to implement people ops practices for the sake of the workforce.

Corporation

A corporation is a company that exists as a separate entity from its shareholders. It’s generally bigger and more complex than small businesses. Due to the sheer number of staff members, it can be challenging to nurture everyone who works in the different divisions of the corporation.

For instance, the leading 500 Fortune companies boasted from 302,394 up to 2.2 million employees in 2019. Nevertheless, corporations usually have enough resources and manpower to establish and run a full-scale people operations department.

Limited Liability Company

A limited liability company (LLC) is a business structure that provides personal liability protection to its owners from business debts and claims. It may have a people ops team or not, based on the size and budget of the LLC. Like other businesses, it can take advantage of the people ops approach for the sake of the workers.

Non-Profit Organization

A non-profit organization, or 501c3 non-profit, operates for the sake of a social cause or public good. Unlike for-profit businesses, its main purpose isn’t to generate income for the owners. Since the compensation is usually lower or non-existent compared to regular businesses, the leaders should make an extra effort to inspire paid employees and unpaid volunteers via people operations practices.

Government Agency

Government agencies are directly part of the federal, state, or local government of the U.S. These public organizations typically prioritize the well-being of their staff members through people ops. For example, the Office of Personnel Management oversees the civil service of the federal government. It’s responsible for coordinating the recruitment of new hires. Plus, it handles the health insurance and retirement benefits programs of existing employees.

How Can You Practice People Operations in Your Business?

No matter what size or type of business you have, you can carry out people operations practices in your organization. Just follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Make a Strategic Plan

First of all, create a plan on how to apply people ops principles to your business. If your organization is big enough, you may conceptualize how to establish a people ops team. If your business is fairly small, you can strategize how to apply people ops practices in small-scale ways. Either way, make sure that your plan is in sync with the vision and mission of the company.

Step 2: Form a People Operations Department

If your company is new, you can build a people ops team from scratch. In case your organization already has an existing HR department, you may gradually convert the team into a people ops department. Based on your requirements, you can hire new people as people ops workers or assign some of your current employees to fill certain roles in the department.

It’s a good idea to handpick professionals with diverse backgrounds for your people ops team. After all, you can benefit from their different skills, including people relations, problem-solving, and data analytics. Plus, they can connect with a wider range of employees because of their varied work experience.

Step 3: Develop a People Ops System

There’s no strict formula on how to create a people ops system so you can develop one that works well for your business. In general, you can begin by setting up an employee database and payroll system or improving the existing one of your HR team.

Even more importantly, you should establish a rewards system so that the workforce will have attractive incentives to level up their work performance. Finally, confirm that your system allows you to effectively monitor and analyze data so you can make future company decisions based on these statistics.

Step 4: Implement Positive Changes

Make a difference in the professional lives of your employees by gradually applying changes for the better. Ensure that your staff members have health benefits and employment perks. Plus, be generous in offering career training and educational opportunities to everyone in the company.

Provide real-life and online venues to promote open discussions and honest conversations among the employees and the management. Overall, take practical measures to turn your office into a physically and mentally conducive place to work.

What Can People Ops Teams Do to Create a Positive Employee Experience?

The people ops department can take active steps to improve the overall experience of employees in the workplace. Here are some ideas which you can carry out in your organization:

Hire staff members with different nationalities, cultural backgrounds, and employment specializations to promote diversity in the office.
Build online group forums where members can share work ideas and discuss hot topics that can make an impact on company decision-making.
Encourage employees to reach sales or productivity quotas through financial rewards.
Invite staff members to attend face-to-face or virtual classes to sharpen their leadership skills and knowledge.
Acknowledge the strengths of staff members through awards with matching prizes like gift cards and travel packages.
Host real-life and online community events to help employees get to know each other and interact with one another.
Give current staff members priority when job openings become available within the organization so they can have the opportunity to move up in their present department or transfer to another one for the sake of professional growth.
Organize team-building activities to strengthen the spirit of cooperation and collaboration within the company.

Aside from these ideas, the people ops leaders and workers can also brainstorm together to create unique incentives to make the organization a better place to work for employees.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for People Operations

People operations is a relatively new people management model compared to the conventional HR model. That’s why we have compiled the answers to basic questions on people ops so you can understand this concept better.

What’s the Difference Between People Operations and Operations Management?

People operations is a business function that’s designed to boost the value of the manpower of an organization. Operations management aims to supervise the production and distribution of the products and services of the business. In short, people operations focuses on the workforce, while operations management concentrates on the commodities offered by the company.

What Is People Operations vs HR?

The people operations team works towards the professional growth and satisfaction of the employees of the business. The HR department safeguards the welfare of the organization by making sure that staff members follow company rules. While both people ops and HR oversee the manpower of a business, they differ from each other in terms of purpose, priority, employee participation, company coordination, problem-solving methods, management systems, and working styles.

What’s a Good Crisis Management Strategy for the People Ops Department?

The people ops department should develop a crisis management plan for continuing operations in a crisis. On one hand, expect to divert a major portion of your manpower and resources in case your company encounters financial troubles, legal issues, or natural disasters. On the other hand, assign key persons, utilize modern technology, and allot funds beforehand so that the people ops processes can be carried out in a minimal way even in the middle of challenging times.

Bottom Line on People Operations

People operations encourage your employees to become the best they can be so they can give their best for your business. It’s definitely worth making an effort to switch from a traditional HR style to a revolutionary people ops approach for the sake of your workforce and your organization. Now that you’ve read our ultimate guide, we hope you’re now ready to start transforming your business through the best people ops practices.

June 29, 2022February 13, 2023

What Is the Purpose of Operations in a Business?

Business operations is an elusive but necessary part of any organization looking to maximize productivity and profit potential. Companies that struggle to understand operational demands often miss key opportunities to succeed. This article explains how operations applies to businesses and tips for improving efficiency across the board.

What Are Operations in a Business?

An operations department exists to manage and facilitate the internal components of a business. The individual or team responsible for operations helps ensure a company has everything it needs to run smoothly from within. These requirements can vary drastically from one business to the next, but always tend to contain four things.

The Right People

Making sure your team fills their roles well is imperative for an efficient business operation. The right people will get tasks done faster and be more productive along the way.

An Efficient Process

Building processes goes a long way toward having an efficient business model. These methods give employees a roadmap to follow when performing tasks in the workplace. Having a uniform system keeps everyone on the same page and allows teams to complete challenges with little help from management.

The Ideal Location

Having the right location is vital for accomplishing the goal of your business. Whether you’re making items or rendering a service, your team works best in an environment suited to the task at hand.

Keeping Up With Equipment

Be it computer systems or manufacturing tools, your company works best with the right equipment. These crucial elements can have a substantial impact on how your business runs.

Which Types of Companies Need Operations?

Many types of companies can benefit from operations. Here are some of the most common ones.

Retail

Retail business operations revolve around product availability and managing inventory. An efficient retail business knows the items it has on shelves and in storage at any given time. This allows teams to place products in strategic locations around the store (or website/online store) to make sought-after items easily accessible.

Having a pulse on inventory also reveals products that aren’t selling and what a retail store may want to buy less often in the future. It also helps keep fast-moving products in front of customers that generate the most revenue.

In a similar vein, having operations in retail helps track price points and how much you can charge for particular items. Prices set too high won’t sell, but anything priced too low is a loss of profit potential.

Retail businesses are just as popular online as brick-and-mortar locations, and selling in the right place makes a huge difference as well. A storefront in a busy shopping area with ample room for stock will likely have more success than a remote location off the beaten path. Selling products online also needs the proper outlet, whether an individual site or an online marketplace.

Service

Services businesses depend primarily on customer interaction. Operations teams must consider all the client touchpoints, such as in-person or via an email campaign. Effective companies find ways to make these connections as seamless as possible, involving efficient processes to communicate promotions, expedite interactions, and generate ongoing sales.

In addition, service teams rely on equipment that makes the experience better for both consumers and the organization. Having individuals that know how to use project management tools go a long way while creating an atmosphere the client feels favorable about.

As in retail establishments, operations teams work to find the best location for providing these services. While some services can be rendered online, others require a physical location that draws customers in.

Restaurant

The restaurant industry combines the best (and worst) of both service and retail. Where a clothing store can leave unwanted clothing on a back shelf for an indefinite period of time, food doesn’t last forever.

Operations must have a solid grip on foodstuffs that sell well and those that need to come off the menu. Food prices fluctuate, and operations must keep tabs on the latest costs and what to sell dishes for. It’s also beneficial to implement processes for food storage and preparation so items don’t go to waste.

On the service side, hiring the right people to fill various positions plays a major role in customer satisfaction. Not everyone can cook a filet mignon perfectly medium-well, and approachable wait staff have a better chance of leaving diners with full stomachs and happy hearts.

A restaurant’s location is paramount to success. Heavily trafficked zones bring in more patrons, and ample space means more seating and shorter wait times.

Manufacturing

The concept of operations began out of a desire for more efficient manufacturing processes. Businesses needing parts to assemble finished goods needed stable processes and organized purchasing systems.

In many cases, several parts come together in one location with the goal of building a quality finished product to sell to consumers. Teams need to carefully track each of these components to ensure nothing is missing and costs aren’t out of hand.

A well-established process for assembly spells more output per day and high profits down the road. An inefficient operation leads to mistakes and slower turnaround times. In most cases, manufacturing occurs in large facilities that must be accessible to receiving lanes to prevent part delays.

Small businesses can also fall under this umbrella if they put together a product to sell. The same guidelines help an in-home business succeed, albeit on a smaller scale.

Technology

Technology is a very skill-specific category where hiring the right people can make all the difference. Operations teams must have a deep understanding of job requirements to bring in staff to handle the scope of projects. Having a training process in place helps new employees get started on the right foot while maximizing chances for success.

Using common hardware and software across teams makes collaborative efforts that much easier across the board. For clients, seeing the same faces and results each time only adds to overall satisfaction.

The Role of Business Operations

Business operations is rarely a solitary position, except in the smallest of companies. Consider whether your organization could benefit from plugging people into any of the following roles:

Forecasting

A forecasting team looks forever to the future, predicting pitfalls that may cause the organization to stumble. Hindsight may be 20/20, but catching issues before they happen keeps a business running like a well-oiled machine.

Knowledge of past events and shortcomings with careful documentation can prevent repeat mistakes the next time around. It similarly helps with creating timelines and budget plans while anticipating expenses, profit, and loss.

Finance

A financial operations manager (or team) oversees the flow of money through an organization. This individual ensures spending doesn’t get out of hand while keeping the company supplied with necessary resources.

This role also plays a part in finding ways to generate new funds as needed for a business to grow. It can also limit employee spending and allocate funds to the right buckets.

Product Design

Product designers use their skills to discover customer needs in a specific market. This group then sets out to create goods to meet that need at a price consumers are willing to pay. Even if a product is not new, product designers can innovate existing items to pinpoint what a customer is looking for.

Quality Control

Quality control teams set guidelines in place to catch potential issues during design and manufacturing processes. Products going out the door with defects reflect poorly on a company and can lead to loss of customers and revenue.

Error-checking begins during the design process and sees a project through to completion. Along the way, quality teams periodically check for flaws and misassembled goods. Consistency also builds toward smoother flow and more finished items heading to stores.

Strategy

Operations strategy involves creating and executing plans that help companies grow. Since businesses don’t have an unlimited source of funds, strategy teams work to determine where resources should go to maximize their chances of success. Strategies may also look to improve product costs or find ways to eliminate budget constraints.

Supply Chain Management

Supplies often constitute the lifeblood of a retail or manufacturing company. Without inventory or components, it’s not possible to generate income or sustain a business model.

Those working in supply chain operations keep products flowing into (and out of) a business. They anticipate and work around shortages while predicting how supply and demand will affect costs and availability in the coming months. The group should also be the first to identify items that aren’t profitable and how to move away from them altogether.

Human Resources

Human resources teams are responsible for putting people in the right positions throughout a company. Doing so keeps people happy and productive while adding to the efficiency of the business as a whole. Interested in hiring the right people for the right positions, then check out our 8-step guide on how to interview someone.

What Does a Director of Operations or Chief Operating Officer (COO) Do?

These two roles are usually synonymous and represent an individual in an executive position. The position comes with the responsibility of overseeing daily operations with a wide lens, ensuring all departments work together as efficiently as possible. Typically, operations analysts from these different groups report directly to the COO.

COOs are often the second-highest rank in any organization, just under the CEO. They handle the internal affairs that keep a company running, executing plans and strategies to accomplish this goal. With such a critical role, a director of operations salary ranges around the $180,000 mark.

Ways to Improve Operations in Your Business

Business operations are fluid in nature, as customer demands change over time. Below are a few methods for improving operations, no matter what size your organization may be.

Measure Performance

To understand how to grow as a company, you must first learn where you stand. Measuring performance requires taking careful stock of budgets, plans, timelines, and processes that make your business work. From there, it’s a matter of uncovering what’s not efficient and improving upon it.

Streamline Processes

Without a good operations strategy in place, processes can be clunky and inefficient. With performance metrics in place, you can zero in on areas of improvement and streamline them. Following this information over time reveals what makes systems work well.

Follow the Latest Trends

An operations analyst should stay on the pulse of the market, making note of ways to improve overall efficiency. Trends could come in the form of new laws or an innovation taking the sector by storm.

Customers change their minds often, so staying apprised of social media chatter or new interests can help your business catch a client’s eye. Don’t be afraid to peek at what the competition is doing well that you can glean from.

Invest in Your People

No matter how many employees you have, investing in your people helps build morale and create a more efficient work environment. Team building events allow individuals and cross-platform teams to work together and accomplish common goals, which they can take back to the task at hand. Check-ins with employees and rewards for jobs well-done speak to the operation of the business as a whole.

Try New Software

Adding new management software or changing up existing programs can provide new insights or the means to streamline processes you couldn’t before. With these services, you can have on-hand sales data, project tracking, inventory management, and more. Best of all, you can store all this information in a single online location.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Operations in Business

Operations in business is a bit of a gray area that looks different from company to company. These questions address some of the biggest questions surrounding the concept.

What are business operations examples?

Business operation jobs could be someone in human resources or a quality control expert on an assembly line. In smaller organizations, the entire operations process may fall on one person’s shoulders.

Why are operations important to a business?

Operations help with the overall management of goods, services, and people. Keeping things efficient cuts down on costs and helps identify weak areas in business processes.

What is the meaning of business operations?

Business operations encompass everything happening within a company to keep things running smoothly. By facilitating these processes, organizations can perform at maximum profit potential.

Bottom Line on Operations in Business

Operations are crucial for any business looking to thrive in an ever-evolving marketplace. Developing streamlined processes and hiring the right people can catapult your company ahead of the competition. No matter your size, having operations in place can spell the difference between success and failure.

May 18, 2022November 23, 2022

How to Use a Gantt Chart in 9 Steps

Gantt charts are a popular and time-tested way of visualizing project workflows. But they’re not just for any project. This project visualization approach aligns with the waterfall methodology that focuses on completing a task or process before the next one can begin.

A Gantt chart lets you organize a project’s timescale and create an overview of team members, resources, and essential ideas in one place. While it’s a powerful method used by veteran project managers, you can easily overcomplicate things if you’re new to it.

How Does a Gantt Chart Work?

Gantt charts as we know them today were created by engineer Henry L. Gantt in the 19th century. It’s a horizontal bar chart with project tasks on the vertical axis and a timeline on the horizontal axis. The chart depicts summary elements, milestones, and task dependencies all in one place.

If it’s the first time you’ve come across Gantt charts, they can look like a stack of bars and arrows. Before moving forward, you need to understand the structure of a Gantt chart and what each bar, its length, and arrow represents.

A Gantt chart is made up of three elements: tasks, task durations, and task dependencies.

Tasks: Each horizontal bar on a Gantt chart represents an individual task in the project. These are the basic building blocks of a project.
Task duration: The length of each bar represents the duration of each project. The starting point of each bar, in relation to the x-axis at the bottom of the chart, represents when each task will start.
Task dependencies: The arrows leading from one bar to the next represent a task dependency. It means the task at the tail of the arrow must be completed first for the task at the head to start.

Key Concepts of a Gantt Chart

The explanation of the three features above is enough for you to have a clear understanding of what a Gantt chart represents. But to have a better understanding of how Gantt charts work, you need to understand a few underlying concepts: the critical path, milestones, dependencies, and resource management.

The Critical Path

The critical path provides an overarching order to your project, establishing a baseline for you to follow. Arguably, the critical path is the most important part of a Gantt chart’s layout. It represents the journey of the project from start to finish.

Every essential aspect of the project is represented in the critical path, which is usually highlighted, for example in red, to symbolize its importance in the project. Any delays in the critical path tasks will lead to inevitable delays in the project.

Milestones

Typically represented as a symbol or shape interposed at certain intervals in the project, a milestone depicts the key goals in the project. Unlike tasks, they are set points in time that give you an idea of what things you need to have completed at what time. Not only do milestones emphasize both minor and major goals within the project, but they also help to create depth in the timescale, breaking it down into manageable pieces.

Dependencies

Dependencies show progression in the chart. These tasks tend to be represented with arrows between one another, highlighting the necessary progression of tasks to reach a goal. This is particularly effective both for providing an overview of a project and so that team members can understand how their particular task fits into place.

The benefits of dependencies include improving collaboration and productivity because when everyone understands their job and their responsibility within the group, they can work towards achieving the collective goal.

Resource Management

One of the greatest benefits of using a Gantt chart is the ability to accurately map out the resources you need, whether that be people or products. You can easily assign tasks to team members according to their strengths. This way, you maximize your team’s efficiency.

Similarly, material resources can be simply distributed using the timescale. This makes ordering and coordinating resources a process that can be managed according to the details on the chart. No more dithering with forms and running out of essential supplies, keeping track of what is needed becomes simple on a Gantt.

Now that you have a better understanding of what Gantt charts are and their underlying principles, let’s move on to the interesting part.

Obviously, you need to learn how to create one before you can learn how to use a Gantt chart. This is why we’ve divided this guide into two parts: creating a Gantt chart and using one. That said, the entire Gantt project management process is pretty simple. The goal is to not overcomplicate things. Follow this principle and you should have a pretty well-planned project schedule on your hands.

How to Create a Gantt Chart in 4 Steps

Creating and using a Gantt chart can be slightly different with different project management tools. We’ll use a generic approach to make this guide easy to understand and follow no matter which project management tools you use.

Step 1: Define Project Outcome and Time Range

Gantt charts are based on the waterfall model which emphasizes clearly defining your project outcome and time frames up-front. You should have a clear understanding of what you or your client wants at the end of the project. This way, it’s easier for you to define the critical path and all the associated individual tasks you need to complete to get there.

You also need to define the time range so your Gantt chart project has a clear start and end date. This timeline will form the foundation on which you build your project Gantt chart.

Step 2: Identify all Essential Project Tasks

The next step is to break down your entire project into smaller, more manageable bits. This is a two-fold process where you first divide your project into subprojects and then identify individual tasks in each of those projects. But this is for larger, more complex projects. If you’ve got a smaller project, you can jump to identifying individual tasks and arrange them chronologically.

Step 3: Identify Relationships between Tasks

This is where you use arrows between tasks and set dependencies. You need to identify the relationships between tasks and decide which task is dependent on which and in what way. Setting dependencies is as easy as drawing an arrow between two bars.

Simply put, there are two types of relationships between tasks: successor and predecessor. But you have four types of dependencies you can set between tasks.

Finish to Start – Can’t start the successor task until the predecessor finishes.
Start to Start – Can’t start the successor task until the predecessor starts.
Start to Finish – Can’t finish the successor activity until the predecessor starts.
Finish to Finish – Can’t finish the successor activity until the predecessor finishes.

Step 4: Add Dates, Resources, and Milestones

Once you’ve identified tasks and identified the relationships between them, your Gantt chart is almost ready to go. All you need to do is add some dates, assign tasks to team members, and set important milestones and you’ll have a ready-to-go Gantt chart.

Finalize when a task starts and when it should be completed. This will help you identify tentative deadlines for your sub-projects and add milestones to the critical path. If your project is already underway, you can start assigning tasks to team members. This completes the creation of the Gantt chart.

If you’re using suitable project management software, creating a Gantt chart would be easy. But if you’re going with conventional spreadsheets, you will have to create and format a chart manually. Once your chart is created, remember to update it as things change. It’s important to review your chart at least once a week to reflect on progress and other changes to your project.

How to Use a Gantt Chart to Plan a Project

Once you’ve created the chart, it’s now time to use it to manage your project. But before we begin, let’s check out a stat that emphasizes the importance of using Gantt charts for project planning.

Approximately 39% of projects fail due to a lack of planning. This is where Gantt management comes in. Project managers can map out the complete project, determine deadlines, and manage your team and resources effectively using Gantt charts. Here are the rest of the steps you need to follow to use a Gantt chart to plan a project.

Step 5: Conduct Workflow Analysis

Gantt charts let you conduct your project’s workflow analysis with ease. This means you can view not only the timescale of work to be performed but chart who is doing that work and what resources you need to put towards certain tasks.

Workflow analysis is a great tool for managers who wish to see, both at a glance and in greater depth how a project is progressing and how resources are being allocated. This makes coordinating teams easier and provides information on progression for each individual as well as on the team.

Using project management software often allows you to utilize additional features which can build upon your workflow analysis within a Gantt chart. Due to the graphic nature of the chart, using it for statistical modeling and further graphing is a beneficial way of understanding project and team workflow.

Step 6: Identify Critical Path

By identifying the critical path in a project, it also becomes simpler to identify priorities and areas of focus for teams and individuals. Because all team members can view this information, everyone has the same level of awareness of the tasks at hand, their deadlines, and the milestones the team is aiming for.

Allowing total transparency in accessing the Gantt chart has many benefits, but access to the critical path is a paramount example. Collaboration and work towards milestones are both improved by improving awareness of the tasks at hand. When a whole team is aiming toward the same goals, there is a greater sense of cohesiveness.

Step 7: Make Your Project More Manageable

Another benefit of the graphical representation of projects through a Gantt chart is that it breaks projects down into more manageable chunks. Through both critical paths and dependencies, it is clear which bar represents which task and the chain of work that is required to progress a project.

As a result of this, each project becomes a set of smaller tasks that can be delegated and sourced out to team members, so everyone has a manageable role within the process, and nobody needs to feel overwhelmed by taking on the project as a whole. The simplistic formatting of the Gantt also allows for fewer meetings and briefings, saving time.

Step 8: Meet Deadlines

The Gantt chart also presents a methodical and automated depiction of a project, so deadlines become more accurate and reliable. Due to dependencies and the following of a critical path, everything runs smoothly according to a plan. Should work get delayed, it is easily amended on the chart.

Deadlines are both easier to follow and easier to correct on a modern Gantt chart. Because the progress of each task is visible, and optionally the progress of individual team members too, keeping on schedule is the priority of everyone as an individual and as a collective. Seeing which tasks to prioritize also enables resources to be better allocated in line with goals.

Step 9: Monitor Project Progress

The final step in managing your project with a Gantt chart involves keeping a close eye on both the Gantt chart as well as those carrying out the project, adjusting the plans as the work progresses.

Maybe a piece of equipment will break down that will set back the start date. Or perhaps the team will take on another project that takes precedence. There could be changes in funding. Or maybe the client will change their mind?

Change is inevitable, but luckily, modern-day Gantt charts don’t require that you start from scratch. By using some elements of the agile methodology, you can make the adjustments as necessary and keep your team up to date.

To monitor project progress, all you need to do is to check the completion level of each bar or team member. This is especially helpful for project managers, especially in industries like marketing, where different strands of a project come together, such as creative tasks and writing tasks.

Top 3 Gantt Chart Software for Project Management

The era of paper and pencil Gantt charts is long gone. So is the time of creating Gantt charts on spreadsheets. Today’s fast-paced work environment demands creativity and swiftness in project management methodologies which is made possible by project management software.

Creating and using Gantt charts becomes much easier when you use Gantt project management software, also known as Gantt chart software. Here are our top picks for the best project management software for Gantt management.

TeamGantt

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Launched in 2010, TeamGantt, a PM tool with time tracking feature, is a Gantt chart creator that makes it simple for you to schedule, manage, and track project tasks and resources. It helps you organize all your documents, conversations, and tasks in one central hub.

It has a powerful drag-and-drop feature that lets you start planning your projects in minutes. TeamGantt is one of the simplest project management software as it is fairly easy to use with customizable Gantt chart templates. It also offers a free plan for small, three-member teams.

Built-in Gantt view
Risk assessment templates
Built-in time tracking ability

Limited features
No integrations.
Lacking customer support

Pricing

Free: Free for 3 users
Standard plan: $24.95 per month for 1 user + unlimited guests
Advanced plan: $29.95 per month for 1 user + unlimited guests

GanttPRO

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GanttPRO offers affordable pricing plans and an intuitive interface along with advanced features, making it a great choice for SMBs. With GanttPRO, you’ll be able to plan your project timelines and oversee individual tasks, resources, and your team efficiently.

Features like importing and exporting options, history and baseline mode, and custom and pre-configured templates make it an attractive choice for Gantt management. GanttPRO also offers integrations with common software like Jira Cloud, Slack, and Google Drive.

Intuitive and easy-to-use interface
Affordable and simple pricing structure
History and baseline mode let you save and return to previous project versions

Limited reporting options
Basic integrations only
Limited customer support

Pricing

Individual: $15 per user month (billed annually)
Team: $8.90 per user month (billed annually)

monday.com

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monday.com offers a range of simple but powerful features for small, remote teams. With its easy-to-use interface, this tool makes it simple to design project workflows and handle day-to-day project tasks.

monday.com offers Gantt chart views in all of its plans and customizable workflow templates for different kinds of projects. It offers integrations with a range of other apps so you can streamline your management with ease. Read the full monday.com review for greater insight into it.

Modern user interface (UI) is easy to use and navigate
Highly customizable features
Ideal for managing ongoing work for multiple projects

Confusing pricing of plans
Slow customer support
Best features only available with upper tiers of paid plans

Pricing

Basic: $10/user per month
Standard: $12/user per month
Pro: $20/user per month
Enterprise: Inquire for price

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for How to Use a Gantt Chart

Here are some frequently asked questions about how to use a Gantt chart to plan a project.

How do you use a Gantt chart effectively?

Gantt charts are based on the waterfall model which means all project deadlines and outcomes need to be predetermined. Although modern project management software lets you make changes while a project is in progress, the most effective way to use a Gantt chart is to have all outcomes outlined. Plus, using one of the best project management tools is also essential.

How do you analyze a Gantt chart?

You need to first know how to read a Gantt chart to analyze it. Understand that the bars represent tasks, their length represents their duration, start, and end times, while arrows depict dependencies between tasks. Using this basic information, you can analyze the chart to identify the critical path, conduct workflow analysis, and make your project more manageable by dividing it into sub-projects.

Are Gantt charts the best project management tool?

Gantt charts are only suitable for some projects. Although they have been in use for many decades, this doesn’t mean they’re the best management tool. Remember that they suit projects that are based on the waterfall model where one task must be completed before the next one starts.

Bottom Line – How to Use a Gantt Chart

Gantt charts are a powerful project management tool that lets you map out your project efficiently and have a clear overview of project progression. Creating and using Gantt charts to plan a project is pretty simple and doesn’t involve a lot of technical skills.

Remember that you want to keep things as simple as possible. It’s easy to overcomplicate things with Gantt charts and this is where it starts going downhill. A quality project management software, also known as Gantt chart software, like TeamGantt, GanttPRO, or monday.com can help you use Gantt charts with ease.

January 10, 2022April 18, 2022

How To Avoid Scope Creep in Project Management

angry manager brainstorming with her team to fix scope creep

Scope creep is one of the biggest culprits for delayed large projects. A lack of clear requirements, involving the wrong stakeholders, lack of documented functional and non-functional requirements, and poorly defined map process flows all contribute to scope creep.

Luckily, there are many strategies a project manager and all project stakeholders can put in place to manage scope creep. These include but are not limited to maintaining an open feedback loop with all stakeholders, gathering feedback early, working in sprints, and keeping detailed records of all changes within the set project scope.

Keep reading to learn more about what scope creep is, what the consequences are, and ways to avoid scope creep for your next successful projects.

What Is Scope Creep?

Scope creep causes projects to take longer than originally planned. Also known as requirement creep, there is no single agreed-upon definition of scope creep. Scope creep is when the original project’s scope expands with new features without taking into account time, budget, and project resources. As a result, it can lead to project delays or even project failure.

For example, your project scope demands building software with three key features within 3 months. At the end of the development, there are seven features, taking 8 months to build with massive overruns and unforeseen costs. These scope changes impact time, costs, and resources in a project, resulting in a change to the project scope, project schedule, and project deliverables.

Sources of scope creep can come from all angles, including the client, end-users, internal stakeholders, and external partners. It could rear its head with something as minuscule as a couple of project changes requested by the client or a lack of feature prioritization by internal stakeholders.

What Are the Consequences of Scope Creep?

There are endless consequences if scope creep turns up in a project. Some of the major effects of requirement creep include too much time spent on unapproved changes, cost overruns, changing project goals, hidden agendas, decreasing time and resources for approved tasks, and missing deadlines.

Coincidentally, one or more of these factors could result in employee attrition and furious clients, leading to a zero-sum game and ever-changing scope, even when using project management tools.

In the most extreme causes, scope creep can cause an entire project to be discontinued.

What Causes Scope Creep?

There are many major causes of scope creep in project management, including the following:

Lack of feature prioritization.
Poorly defined project scope.
Varying stakeholder opinion.
Missing leadership.
Too much user feedback.
Lack of stakeholder involvement.
Lack of client discipline.
Long projects.

Lack of Feature Prioritization

From the onset, requirement creep can be caused by failing to organize a project’s requirements from highest to lowest priority. This may create a disproportionate amount of time spent on lower priority tasks over higher priority tasks.

Poorly Defined Project Scope

Failing to outline and define project scope when the project begins could cause disruptions and iterations led by stakeholders and project managers, not the project plan itself. We highly recommend creating a project scope statement or similar mission statement document to clearly outline all project requirements, and sharing it with stakeholders and clients before the project starts.

Varying Stakeholder Opinion

In a typical project, input to the change control process can come from many key stakeholders, including project owners, engineers, designers, team members, and others. Stakeholders are those individuals who either are involved in the project or are affected by them. Generally, scope creeps caused by dissenting opinions can be addressed by reducing the number of stakeholders.

Missing Leadership

Leadership is integral to the success of any project. A leader who does not effectively communicate and manage scope and requirements is bound to have project direction turn a full 180 degrees. Any new requests for project features should have full buy-in from the managers and all stakeholders before starting work.

Too Much User Feedback

User feedback can often derail projects rather than move projects forward. Many amateur-level project management teams that fail to prioritize changes and differential deal breakers from “nice-to-have” changes often see project scope creep. Any customer feedback should be gathered and incorporated as early in the process as possible for managing scope creep later.

Lack of Stakeholder Involvement

One of the biggest causes of project scope creep is a lack of stakeholder involvement in defining a project’s objectives. These may include higher-level executives or another project team member who does not devote enough time to chime in on new features, which can force other project team members to make decisions on their own.

Lack of Client Discipline

One major cause of creep is not setting boundaries with the client early on in the project plan. If boundaries are not set, too many change requests are bound to occur, costing more time and resources than originally planned. It is critical to be firm with clients and maintain an open line of communication around potentially missed deadlines so everyone is on the same page.

Long Projects

In general, the longer the particular project is, the greater the likelihood of scope creep. When projects run over a long period, it gives stakeholders more time to change their minds and to come up with new requirements that may not fit within the overall project scope.

How To Identify Scope Creep

A few examples of how to minimize and limit scope creep include poor estimations and lacking user involvement early in the process.

Poor Estimation

Estimating small adjustments on entirely new tasks and incorporating them into a project plan is challenging for project managers everywhere. One way to prevent creep is to involve the whole team in the estimation process and to establish all tasks and deadlines upfront, preferably using project management software such as ClickUp.

No User Involvement Early in the Process

Especially true with software and product project management phases, not involving and incorporating customer feedback early in the process can cause your project to go downhill quickly. Early user validation confirms your project is on the correct track. If users are involved too late in the process and go against the grain, your entire project could be in jeopardy.

When using project management software like ClickUp, it is easy to identify a lack of user involvement early. Simply create sub-tasks for collecting feedback from users at regular stages of the project or upon each important milestone to stay on track.

Tips To Avoid and Prevent Scope Creep

In scope creep project management, there are a lot of actionable items a project manager and all stakeholders can do to limit creep, including the following:

Make a clear statement of work.
Hold a kickoff meeting.
Do not be afraid to say no.
Document, document, and document some more.
Embrace change.
Keep simple changes and new tasks separate.
Keep your clients informed.

Make a Clear Statement of Work

A statement of work (SOW) is a project roadmap that contains a list of all tasks, due dates, and a description for each task, along with all assigned resources. It is a helpful tool to manage projects and make sure everyone is on the same page.

Remember, an SOW ensures that the client and project owner are aligned with all requirements, stating work exactly how the customer explained it and how project leaders, engineers, programmers, and other stakeholders understand and respond to new requests and additional project details. With a clear statement of work, expect a lower risk of scope creep.

Hold a Kickoff Meeting

Hold a kick-off meeting as soon as your detailed scope of work is finalized. This allows the opportunity for all project stakeholders to get together and review all requirements before starting work. This meeting should discuss roles, project milestones, allocated results, and reiterate the check-in process, whether they be daily or weekly meetings, to go over progress.

Do Not Be Afraid To Say No

Oftentimes, scope creep can occur due to a lack of discipline. With every client change request, be ready to present a case arguing against it or gather all requests and label them as part of a new project to start once the current work is complete.

Document, Document, and Document Some More

One major cause of scope creep is a lack of communication between the client and the project team, resulting in a poor change control process. With any change to the project scope, be sure to put the additional time and costs to be incurred in writing. If conducting meetings by phone, send a written recap to all people on the call.

Although creep cannot be eliminated, proper documentation can slow it down or extend deadlines as needed. This is one of the most effective ways of preventing requirement creep.

Embrace Change

Even with the best project managers and project teams, change is inevitable with every project. To limit scope creep with constant changes, it is important for a project manager to define detailed requirements, log changes, re-plan, collect feedback, and request additional resources to the project. If necessary, project managers can reduce scope creep, depending on the project’s objective.

Every change should keep a detailed record and every baseline should be kept up to date to help match project progress to resources. Detailed records should take into account new project overruns, resources, or tasks needed for completion. Too many requested changes should be led by a request for additional funding, either from internal stakeholders or the client.

Remember, any change can put a serious dent in budgets, task deadlines, and resources.

Keep Simple Changes and New Tasks Separate

When addressing scope creep, there is a difference between tweaking existing functionality and creating an entirely new function. Any new tasks outside of the project scope could be met with a new estimation of time, resources, and deadlines. If the new task or scope change is agreed upon, enter it into your project charter as part of a new or existing milestone.

Keep Your Clients Informed

To handle scope creep, clients should be informed of how decision-making is made with new change requests from the original scope. It is vital to document and agree upon all current project objectives and change requests with the client, as part of daily or weekly status meetings.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for How to Avoid Scope Creep

What Causes Scope Creep?

There are five primary reasons for scope creep. These include poor communication on time and estimates of budget to internal stakeholders and clients, as well as adequately defined requirements, a lack of documentation, lack of control over changes, and an absurdly long project run time. All project management methodologies try to address these issues.

Why Should Scope Creep Be Avoided?

Scope creep adds features and functionality to the project scope without any consideration paid to time, cost, and resources. This could cause projects to exceed their initial deadlines, exceed budgets, or have a completely different set of project deliverables than the ones initially outlined.

All of these have a major impact from multiple angles, from putting stakeholders’ jobs at risk to a potential breach of contract, which could result in project failure and loss of professional reputation.

How Do You Limit Scope Creep? How Do You Handle It When That Is Inevitable?

The best way to mitigate scope creep is by being overly communicative. Establish all project objectives with time and budget estimates upfront, letting the client know any changes to the scope will require revised estimates for a new agreed-upon scope. All of these are effective ways to control scope creep or manage it as soon as it occurs.

Secondly, be sure to prioritize features upfront. Identify what is necessary for finalizing your project and set clauses in your statement of work on how the change will be handled.

Thirdly, be sure to estimate properly. For all new client and business requirements, ensure to involve your entire team in the estimate process and do not make decisions in a vacuum.

Relatedly, have a plan to incorporate feedback and identify adjustments versus new tasks. Simple adjustments can be incorporated as part of an existing project plan where new tasks could be entered as part of a new project.

Final Thoughts on How to Avoid Scope Creep

One of the biggest factors in making or breaking a project is scope creep. Scope creep causes project overruns, wasted resources, and unclear expectations between the project owner, internal stakeholders, and the client. We highly recommend understanding scope creep, the causes, and how to avoid and prevent scope creep to move any project forward.

One project management software that could account for change management to limit requirement creep is ClickUp. ClickUp is a helpful project management tool for small to large-sized businesses managing projects across all industries from software engineering to design.

January 5, 2022June 22, 2022

Project Scheduling: What Is a Schedule and Scheduling Management?

A project scheduling calendar with pinned dates

Anyone who has been responsible for a work schedule knows how complicated they can be. Imagine how much more complicated the schedule for producing an app or even constructing a building must be. Project scheduling is an involved topic that can be bewildering. However, those who take the time to understand it will discover a powerful tool for project managers.

Key Takeaways: Project Scheduling

Project scheduling is a multi-part process that takes the plan and turns it into concrete steps.
At minimum, a project schedule contains an estimated start and end date for the project.
Usually, a project schedule is a complex document that contains a lot of information, such as task lists, estimated task durations, and more.
Techniques like the critical path method and program evaluation review technique can be used to analyze the project schedule — looking for critical tasks or providing expert time estimates.
Modern project scheduling software is a great tool for project scheduling.
During the project, the projected schedule may change due to real-world variables.
As the project continues, the project schedule can be used for what-if scenarios, baseline comparisons, and performance assessments, among other things.

Project Scheduling Overview

The process of arriving at a complete and even vaguely accurate project schedule is no easy task. However, it is a critical one in the field of project management. Not only does it allow for more detailed project planning, but it is also a vital aspect of determining resource allocation and even determining project success. A project schedule is one of the most useful tools a project manager has at their disposal.

In some ways, project scheduling is the first place the ideas underlying project planning come into contact with the real world. The project scope —the goal and the process for achieving it— has to be broken down into project tasks. Project details have to be determined and taken into account.

At the end of the project scheduling process, those disparate factors are translated into estimates and concrete dates. Key tasks that can’t be delayed in the project process are identified. A roadmap of goals and requirements, the project schedule, is developed to keep the project on track and on time.

What Is Project Scheduling?

A project scheduling process analyzes task sequences, durations, requirements, and constraints in order to develop a project schedule. The project schedule itself is the planned dates for performing those project tasks and meeting milestones.

There are a number of steps to create a project schedule, including developing task lists and a work breakdown structure (WBS), as well as putting together a project timeline.

However, once the initial schedule has been developed, work has only really just begun. The schedule can then be used by project managers in further project planning, to estimate usage of organizational resources and identify critical tasks.

In complex projects, a well-defined schedule can be the only way of keeping things organized, so that prerequisites are met and the project isn’t delayed. Finding critical tasks means resources are directed where they can do the most good. Some types of analyses can also call on the expertise of team members to get informed opinions.

The schedule will most likely change throughout the project as hazards and efficiencies are discovered. However, once there is a draft schedule, project management tools allow managers to anticipate obstacles, create budgets, and more. Techniques like crashing and fast-tracking can also be used to change completion dates.

Why Create a Project Schedule?

While other aspects of a project plan detail the what, where, and why of the project, a detailed project schedule provides the who and when. In other words, creating a project schedule is the first step in turning a plan into a product. Schedules play a critical role in project success in several ways, including:

Why you should create a project schedule

Create a project timeline.
Serve as a control tool.
Efficient resource allocation.
Portfolio management tool.
Serve as a communication tool.

Create a Project Timeline

A project’s timeline adds actual, if estimated, start and end dates to a plan. That is valuable in its own right for a number of reasons, but one important one is the work breakdown structure. The WBS is the list of tasks and the logical order in which they have to be done.

In project scheduling terminology, it helps identify predecessor tasks, which have to be completed before another task, the successor task, can start. The WBS can be expressed in several ways, including Gantt charts or network diagrams.

Project scheduling also provides tools for identifying risk and avoiding it. The critical path method, as we’ll see later, produces a list of tasks that can delay the entire project. A project manager might therefore devote more resources to those tasks.

Serve as a Control Tool

An initial schedule is an estimate and inevitably things will change, disrupting project progress. A schedule can help clarify which changes are worth making despite the hit to a project’s progress. It provides a baseline against which delays and costs can be gauged. Controlling changes to the project scope is vital to completing a project successfully.

Efficient Resource Allocation

Using a schedule, it’s possible to begin to allocate resources where and when they’re needed. A schedule can also reveal when there is a shortage of the resources required, potentially delaying the project.

On the other hand, a schedule can also be used to effectively manage techniques like fast-tracking or crashing, where more resources are devoted to a task to complete it more quickly.

Serve as a Portfolio Management Tool

Most companies work on more than one thing at a time. With the schedule of each before you, it’s possible to make informed choices regarding project portfolio management. In other words, selecting the projects that will have the greatest benefit. It can also clarify how to distribute resources to each project in resource planning.

Serve as a Communication Tool

The schedule can be a great tool for communicating with team members and other stakeholders. With a clear schedule, everyone is on the same page regarding deadlines, resources, and other important information.

A clear schedule is also a prime use of PM software for startups, showing investors what they can expect at each step.

Project Scheduling Steps

Creating a project schedule is much more complicated than just coming up with a timeline or project calendar. It involves parceling out work, estimating duration and resources, and juggling a range of crucial issues. An outline of the process for creating a schedule might look like this:

Develop the WBS.
Define tasks and logic.
Estimate task duration.
Define resources.
Analyze the schedule.

Develop the WBS

A WBS is sort of like a step-by-step process for accomplishing the goals set out in the project plan. However, the relationship between each step may be more complicated than a simple consecutive task list.

Working out those relationships is one of the more important and complex tasks project managers may be responsible for. As part of the project scheduling process, each step is further broken down into work packages.

Define Tasks and Logic

In this step, the work to be done is further broken down into individual tasks. Project tasks are specific pieces of work, sometimes also called project activities. Project managers may decide how many tasks there are, or other factors may come into play.

The logic underlying task dependencies also have to be defined. In other words, individual tasks can relate to each other in different ways. Some examples include:

Hard logic: One task must be completed before the next can begin.
Soft logic: One type of task is usually performed before another, even if there’s no strict requirement.
False logic: An arbitrary order because you can’t work on all tasks at once.

Additionally, the requirements of the logic can be defined according to need. The most basic is finish-to-start, meaning one task must finish before the next can start. Another is finish-to-finish, which requires one task to finish before the next can be finished, but doesn’t define its start. Other options include start-to-start and start-to-finish.

Estimate Task Duration

The WBS allows for the time estimates found in project schedules. The duration of each task is estimated—both best and worst cases—which, when added together, give the total project length. This is the ideal project schedule, in which the duration of each task is estimated without considering outside factors.

Two dates for completion are usually given, using the best and worst-case time estimates. The difference between those two dates is the ‘float’ or ‘slack’ in the project timeline. A common way of displaying this information is the Gantt chart.

Define Resources

In a draft schedule, the resources needed may not be taken into account. It’s reckoned purely by the amount of time each task is estimated to take, assuming perfect resource availability. At that point, it’s possible to gauge resources required at each point in your task list, compared to their availability.

Resources can be things like materials or software. One of the most important resources is the project teams’ time.

Analyze the Schedule

Some of the most important tools available to a project manager are project scheduling techniques, methods of analyzing the schedule to better understand it. This step can also be thought of as optimizing the schedule.

By using project management techniques, two of which are described below, it’s possible to identify crucial tasks, accurately predict the project’s completion, and judge resource requirements.

Techniques

In the same way, the right tools help a carpenter take apart and put together wood, project scheduling tools help project managers better understand the relationships between tasks. For example, if two tasks can be worked on simultaneously, time and money are saved. Effective project scheduling also reveals key tasks, ones that can be used to aid in schedule management.

The right project scheduling software can make creating the project schedule much easier. There are many options, though you can check out our MS Project vs ClickUp review for examples.

Scheduling software will have tools to use the two project scheduling techniques described below.

Critical Path Method (CPM)

CPM is a tool that considers all the tasks in the entire project, mapping out relationships in order to create a project schedule. It is a fundamental and common tool in project management that is usually used in combination with a network line diagram. Using it to calculate the longest path counterintuitively provides the shortest completion time of the project.

To clarify how it works, imagine that a project is broken into steps. In each step, one task will have the longest duration, which becomes the duration for the entire step. That task is the critical task and their completion usually defines major milestones. By plotting the schedule around critical tasks, we prevent redundancy and unnecessary delays.

The estimate for each tasks’ duration is usually given for the best case, the worst case, and the most likely case. The difference between the best and worst-case scenarios is the float or slack. In the strictest sense, critical tasks should have 0 floats. However, ‘near’ critical paths may be used with more flexibility.

One common way of visualizing these charts is the network line diagram, though Gantt charts can also be used.

CPM doesn’t take resource availability into account. As a result, resource management comes into play in other steps. Sometimes, another technique called resource leveling may be applied.

Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)

PERT was developed for military projects during the Cold War, in the early days of modern project management. It provides a way to accurately estimate project schedules by involving team members with expertise in each area. Each of the project activities’ or tasks’ duration is estimated. By adding them together, an overall project time can be calculated.

Unlike CPM, the question of how to manage resources does come into play with PERT analysis. For example, it can reveal when more resources will be needed to keep the project on task.

While team collaboration is part of the PERT process, the entire team usually won’t be involved. Additionally, to keep things manageable, this technique may only be used for specific tasks.

Tools To Create Project Schedules in ClickUp

ClickUp has some of the best project management tools that are available. Modern project scheduling software offers a wider range of options and project scheduling tools than ever before, while also remaining relatively easy to use. As a result, ClickUp has many options to assist a project manager with their project scheduling. Some of the tools are:

Tasks.
Relationships.
Views.

Tasks

The basis of the system is the task, which has the same general meaning we’ve been using: a discrete bit of work. An example might be an article for a website or a particular software function. Using tasks, it’s possible to monitor project progress and even be notified about overdue tasks.

Relationships

Multiple tasks can be strung together with task dependencies, which ClickUp calls its Relationships tool. It’s a ClickApp that has to be activated, so it’s not available to the free tier. However, with Relationships, tasks can be linked to each other without creating a dependency. Tasks can also be set as blocking or waiting on another task.

Views

The project status can be reviewed using several reporting tools, which in ClickUp are accessed through different Views. For example, the Gantt view creates a Gantt chart for the project, based on the tasks and dependencies you’ve defined. Using Gantt charts, it’s possible to identify tasks that are causing bottlenecks or other causes of delays.

The major resource ClickUp is concerned with is people time, the workload of your team members. This can be reviewed in the Workload and Timeline views, allowing you to see how everyone is spending their time, as well as their availability.

Another ClickUp, called Milestones, allows you to create a milestone schedule of significant events. Milestones can be used to compare projected and actual progress, among other things.

See how similar apps stack up against our favorite in our ClickUp vs Hive and ClickUp vs GanttPro reviews.

Managing Project Schedules

The project schedule has been created and assigned tasks begun, but there are still many ways to use a project schedule as part of your project management strategy. The schedule is a tool that may evolve but will continue to be useful until the project’s close. Among other techniques, it can be used in:

What-if scenarios.
Comparisons to baseline.
Performance assessments.

In addition to tracking project progress, project management software can be helpful with all of the techniques described in this section. PM scheduling software allows you to alter variables or change tasks without entering information more than once.

What-If Scenarios

The basic concept is familiar to just about everyone. Try to imagine likely scenarios that might affect the schedule, then follow those scenarios to see what could happen. What-if analysis should try to take into account all the deliverables, including documentation or marketing materials.

This strategy is particularly useful for resource planning. Experimenting with different, hypothetical task management and resource management problems can prevent obstacles from arising.

Comparison to Baseline

The master project schedule provides an ideal schedule which the actual progress can be measured against. This is a key aspect of schedule management, comparing your average weekly planner notes, workload, task progress, and other factors against the original estimations. Doing so can often reveal problem areas and tasks that are lacking resources.

Performance Assessments

The flipside of a baseline comparison is the performance assessment. Team members’ performance should be gauged regularly, both to help them improve and to track performance. Similar assessments can be made for vendors, suppliers, or other aspects of the project. It’s not just people that are assessed.

Once a problem is identified, these assessments can be used to pinpoint the causes. They might also highlight potential solutions.

Key Project Schedule Related Terms

There is a lot of specialized languages when discussing the project scheduling process. To help keep things clear, here is a brief list of key terms and their definitions:

Task (also activity): A discrete piece of work, like an article or block of code.
Critical path: The sequence of tasks that determines the duration of the project.
Critical task: A task on the critical path, which determines a project’s duration. Not necessarily an important or difficult task, it’s the duration that’s significant.
Dependencies: A logical relationship between two tasks, either as a requirement or product.
Float (also slack): The difference between the best case and worst case duration estimates for the project.
Gantt chart: Gantt charts are a form of bar chart that indicates projected task duration, task dependencies, progress, and other information. Often combined with the project calendar.
Network line diagram or network diagram: A graphical method of representing the dependencies between tasks.
Resource: Skilled team members, services, supplies, and other requirements to complete tasks.
Resource leveling: Using resource requirements and availability to determine start and end dates.
Schedule: The planned dates for completing tasks or meeting milestones.
Successor: A task that cannot start until its predecessor is complete.
Predecessor: A task that is required to be completed before another task, its successor, can be begun.
Work breakdown structure: A breakdown of the project plan into specific steps and work packages.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Project Scheduling

What Is the Purpose of Project Scheduling?

At its most basic level, project scheduling provides estimated start and end dates for the project. Project managers usually put more detail into a schedule and use it in a variety of ways, including:

1. Creating a breakdown of tasks.
2. Creating a baseline for comparison.
3. Estimating duration of tasks and the overall project.
4. Estimating resource requirements.

A fully formed project schedule is a complex document that includes analyses of task sequences, resource requirements, and a great deal more.

What Are the Basic Principles of Project Scheduling?

There is a lot that goes into a project schedule. Additionally, each schedule is unique as the requirements for each project will vary. As a result, there is no single set of project scheduling principles. However, concepts that are important and help to keep in mind include:

1. Obtain time estimates for each task.
2. Use those figures to arrive at an overall estimated project duration.
3. Establish how each task relates to the overall project.
4. Specify start and finish dates for each task.
5. Identify the tasks that are critical to timely completion.

What Is Critical Path Technique?

The critical path method is one of several project scheduling tools used to analyze the relationships between tasks. Using a few basic ideas, a path is traced from one task to the next from beginning to end. In the process, tasks that, if they are delayed, will delay the overall project are identified.

Final Thoughts on Project Scheduling

There have been books filled with different ideas about and on methods for producing a project schedule. As a result, we can’t do more than scrape the surface of the topic.

However, it’s a study that just about everyone could benefit from. By better understanding the process of producing project schedules, it’s possible to learn practical methods for managing our own projects and lives.

March 2, 2015February 2, 2022

Project or Operation?

Team leader presenting marketing plan on a white board to team members

A few weeks ago we held a course on Project Management Fundamentals. Every student introduced themselves; they were all seasoned professionals with 7 years of experience or more in their field. Justine worked for a manufacturing company. Kumar was a software developer. Ann deployed projects for a Cable TV provider. Carlos was a construction manager.

An interesting situation developed when we started discussing what constitutes a project. I asked the students for examples of the types of projects they deployed as part of their work, so I could tailor my stories. The examples were varied of course, as many initiatives can be considered a project. Kumar indicated that sometimes he needed to develop fixes for software bugs; Justine said that sometimes she had stations to install or replace in her manufacturing line. Ann mentioned she needed to plan Cable TV installations for her technicians.

I tried to understand Ann’s project constraints a bit better. Were the installations for new construction? For a group of existing customers? She seemed confused by the attention. The difficulty finally dawned on me when I asked what constituted the beginning and the end for her projects. She answered: “The first and the last day of the month”.

With a bit more discussion we realized that it was a misnomer to call her role a ‘project manager’, as her responsibility was an operation, not a project. Although she planned and assigned technicians and equipment for a whole month the effort never ended, it never ended. Similar to ‘payroll’ for example. She was astonished that neither she nor her management had realized this before. Her job planning, yes, but it never ended, which projects must.

Why is the differentiation important? Because one would optimize efforts that have a distinct beginning and end (projects) in a totally different way from efforts which are continuous and sustain the organization (operations). Everything from staffing to funding would be done considering different priorities and goals. Although Ann stayed in the class, I saw her on the last day signing on to a ‘logistics’ course.

December 1, 2014February 2, 2022

A Project With China

Wrinkled Chinese flag on a dark background

The 21st century has brought a great increase in projects with companies in the growing economies of Brasil, Russia, India and China (for which Goldman Sachs coined the acronym of “BRIC” countries). There is no denying that, with the emphasis of multinationals in fulfilling the demands of those growing middle classes, many project managers can expect to perform projects with team members from those countries sooner or later.

A good friend recently was asked to go to Shenzhen to manage a project for his company’s Chinese business partner. As any good international traveler would do, my friend Fareed did as much research as possible before going to China. He read plenty of books on Chinese culture and customs; he got a Chinese cookbook; he even rented Chinese movies in Mandarin (with subtitles in English of course).

All this research yielded the following picture: the Chinese are a hard-working, collectivistic society. They are quite accepting of people in power and are highly contextual (which means that they take their cues from the situation more readily than from what is written).

I saw Fareed after his trip and asked him how the trip, and the project, had gone. “Great” he said “but instead of highly collectivistic I found everyone in China to be highly individualistic”. Based on his research, he had gone expecting people to act based on what was best for their group. Yet, everyone from the local builder, developer, driver, even the secretary took initiative and performed tasks depending on what was best for them, not necessarily their company. That came as a surprise.

We chatted about it at some length and finally arrived at the following conclusions, which we will apply to our future projects: (1) although a highly collectivistic culture in the past, given recent economic and other liberalization, Chinese culture may be changing from highly to moderately collectivistic. Maybe some day they will become an individualistic culture, much like the American or the Australian. And (2) whatever ideas you may have about another culture, even when based on research or experience, be ready to toss them out the window, as cultures are alive and constantly changing.

August 19, 2014February 2, 2022

The PMO Blues

Corporate person holding a couple of documents

A good friend who shall remain anonymous deploys projects for a large IT organization. Recently, as often happens, our conversation strayed into “work” topics. This time the subject became her Program Management Office, or PMO, with which she was greatly annoyed.

“The volumes and volumes of reporting and paper my PMO demands have become completely unwieldy ”… “What’s worse is that, after all the hours the different measurements, trackers, logs and reports take nobody looks at them, much less management!” It appears Line of Business managers were now asking for reports additional to PMO reporting so they would be relevant, thereby increasing time demands on project managers.

It was not always like this. When the PMO first came into being in that company, about a decade ago, it was well received and immediately successful. Projects back then were just “stuff that needed doing”. No standards, no templates, no regular reports. Some project managers were more skillful than others, and they got better promotions. But with the PMO, all projects began to be more successful. Common reporting began. Tracking progress began. Unsuccessful projects were reshaped or cancelled. A few years later unfortunately, PMO demands had snowballed , and many new rules for projects had questionable value.

Last year, for example, their PMO had issued the mandate that the time units for all projects had to be “days”. Any project artifacts not in “days”, had to be edited and re-published using “days”. Every estimate, every schedule, going back a year. The reason was that the PMO felt it was pivotal to link all project schedules such that they could be rolled-up into one grand, “master schedule” for the whole company. My friend was aghast. “Hundreds of [obviously unpaid] hours required of project managers to retrofit project documentation, and for what?” … “Show me a single management decision that was made or changed from rolling up these collective schedules. Does any manager even look at these rolled-up figures…? She had a point.

So it is critical that management in our PMOs remain vigilant. It is important that they stay relevant and engaged, so they don’t take the PMO in questionable directions. PMOs are a natural source of change in the organization. If they cannot effectively introduce important changes, who will? Here are a few recommendations for PMO management:

Identify And Rank Problem Areas

The PMO and its management should be able to articulate at any given point which are the company’s pain points they are solving. What areas in their projects need improvement? What is their ranking? Is it profitability? Is it resource utilization? Then introduce new changes slowly, careful of correlating them with expected business benefits everyone (or at least senior management) considers strategic .

Seek Feedback From Experienced PMs

More managers could take advantage of the knowledge their more experienced resources have. Who better to evaluate what works or does not work in projects than the people who have been deploying them for customers, for years? All too often a good solution has been crafted by those in the front lines, but the problem remains unresolved because no one has asked those with first-hand knowledge what a good approach might be.

Retire Tools That Do Not Work

Finally, PMO management needs to be courageous enough to alter, or retire altogether, tools that are not producing expected business benefits. Maybe the tools take too long to deploy. Maybe they place additional hours of burden on project managers. Implementing a project is tricky enough, so let us try to not give project managers, additionally, the PMO Blues.

May 23, 2014February 2, 2022

Green project management

Sustainable green and healthy earth concept

One of the things which I have noticed since living in Japan over the last 3 months is how much plastic there is. Everything seems to come wrapped in the stuff, even if it already comes with a more than adequate natural packaging – bananas for example. At the supermarket, a piece of fish wrapped in plastic is given its own plastic bag at the checkout and then another plastic bag for all of the groceries. Three layers of plastic then for good measure.

All this plastic got me thinking about green project management and whether environmental concerns can be better integrated into mainstream project management. Although to give them credit, the local government here does take recycling waste very seriously. There are bins everywhere – one for plastic, one for paper, one for tin cans, another for glass, and one for the stuff which cannot be recycled. But aren’t we doing things the wrong way round? Rather than producing a whole lot of plastic and then collecting and recycling it, wouldn’t it be better if we didn’t produce as much in the first place?

After thinking this through, I think it’s time to add another aspect to a project’s performance – sustainability and the project’s contribution to it. If we can set targets for sustainability on our projects, we can work towards a more secure future on this planet for our children. For example, when you procure resources on your project, do know if they come from a sustainable source? The paper which you use in your office – does it come from a managed plantation, or from trees felled in a tropical rainforest?

Hang on a minute I hear you say. The shareholders and executives in my company only care about the bottom line and therefore it’s my duty to buy resources in an efficient way. If buying resources from sustainable sources costs more, then it’s not going to happen. This is certainly true. In a commercial organization, the project needs to show a return on investment, but in non-commercial projects this isn’t necessarily the case.

It’s also true that we have probably always sourced things based upon cost, so doing things which are more costly just isn’t going to happen. I think this is where education plays a part.

Project Managers who are concerned about sustainability can now gain knowledge and accreditation in green project management. A quick Google of sustainable project management also revealed this book which looks like a really interesting read. It’s on my list of books to read in the coming months.

By Project Managers gaining more knowledge of sustainability in relation to project management, they can begin to educate corporate executives why setting sustainability targets on projects can only be a good thing.

March 20, 2014February 2, 2022

My own moving country project

Business project concepts spread throughout desk

I’m a lucky guy. I’ve had the fortune to be able to move half way around the world, start up in a completely alien country, and manage to keep the stress levels under control – for much of the time anyway.

I’m writing this post from Tokyo, a city I have visited many times previously – both for work and for leisure. It’s been rather cold since arriving, but nothing which a boy from the north of England cannot endure.

So, what’s this got to do with project management? Well, quite a bit actually, if we consider the move (which I made with my wife who is Japanese) as a project.

Planning

Like all projects it required a plan. We (I should say my wife) made a very detailed plan, which started months in advance, and got more detailed the nearer to got to the moving date. There were several milestones along the way – putting our house on the rental market for example.

Changes

Things changed unexpectedly which meant that we had to take some decisions and re-plan accordingly – for example when the nice tenants we had found for our house wanted to move in 3 weeks earlier than we wanted.

Risks

There were risks to be considered – for example, what if our 2 lovely Chihuahuas weren’t allowed on the plane, or worse, were refused entry when we faced quarantine at Tokyo’s airport? Governments tend to like paperwork at the best of times, but I was totally unprepared for the amount of paperwork demanded by these two rabies-free island nations.

Execution

So, the plan evolved – injections, visas, tickets, moving, packing, selling the car – each one ticked off as they got completed, each one getting us closer to the final day.

My wife did an astonishingly good job of planning everything – even down to having futons and duvets, cutlery and crockery delivered within 2 hours of our moving into the Tokyo house the day after we arrived. Two hours later, the fibre-optic cable was installed for our internet connection. My wife has never been on a project management training course, but for her, the planning of all the different steps involved follows a certain inherent logic, just like it would on any other project.

48 hours prior to departure we had to have various paperwork completed by our vets in the UK. The day before flying this had been faxed off to the Japanese quarantine people who had promised to check it before we arrived.

Murphy’s Law (if something can go wrong it will)

On the morning of our departure their reply landed in our inbox. “Don’t forget to bring the original rabies antibody test certificates with you – otherwise your pets may be refused entry and may be sent back to their country of origin”. We looked at each other in horror. Of all the things which we had thought about and had planned for, we realized this was the one thing which we had overlooked. In fact we didn’t have the originals – they were at the vets in London.

We immediately phoned the vets. Luckily they still had them and we could pick them up on our way to the airport. So, we made a 2 hour detour to get the certificates, but this was well within the slack which we had allowed in the plan to get to the airport.

So, we arrived at the airport, after driving through yet another of the UK’s winter storms and went to check-in. The attendant took one look at the dogs in their crates and said we couldn’t take them. We couldn’t believe it. We had double-checked when we booked the flight that the pets could be carried in the cabin. We argued and when he realized that they were bound for the cabin we were OK to check-in with both dogs.

One huge sigh of relief and a walk through security later, we were able to board. Eleven hours on a flight with no toilet or food or water is not much fun for a small dog. Yet despite a few passengers being startled by the occasional bark, their first flight was thankfully pretty good.

Lessons

So, what lessons can we take away from this? Well, for one, plan your project. Had we not planned in detail, there would have been a lot more surprises along the way.

Make sure you analyse all risks beforehand and ensure you have a plan to deal with them. We had tried to reduce most risks, for example by researching in detail the requirements of the Japanese quarantine and the UK pet export regulations. But there was always the chance that we might be refused entry.

Lastly, be prepared to change your plan, when things come up unexpectedly.

I’m sure that you have had similar experiences when managing projects not just at work, but in your personal life too. Did an awareness of project management methods help you as much as it helped me?

What Is People Operations?

People Operations vs HR: What’s the Difference?

People Operations

Traditional HR

Purpose

Priority

Employee Participation

Company Coordination

Problem-Solving

System

Style

What Do People Ops Workers Do?

What Is the Role of the People Ops Team?

Who Leads the People Operations Department?

People Operations Director

People Operations Manager

What Types of Organizations Need People Ops?

Sole Proprietorship

Partnership

Corporation

Limited Liability Company

Non-Profit Organization

Government Agency

How Can You Practice People Operations in Your Business?

Step 1: Make a Strategic Plan

Step 2: Form a People Operations Department

Step 3: Develop a People Ops System

Step 4: Implement Positive Changes

What Can People Ops Teams Do to Create a Positive Employee Experience?

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for People Operations

Bottom Line on People Operations

What Are Operations in a Business?

The Right People

An Efficient Process

The Ideal Location

Keeping Up With Equipment

Which Types of Companies Need Operations?

Retail

Service

Restaurant

Manufacturing

Technology

The Role of Business Operations

Forecasting

Finance

Product Design

Quality Control

Strategy

Supply Chain Management

Human Resources

What Does a Director of Operations or Chief Operating Officer (COO) Do?

Ways to Improve Operations in Your Business

Measure Performance

Streamline Processes

Follow the Latest Trends

Invest in Your People

Try New Software

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for Operations in Business

Bottom Line on Operations in Business

How Does a Gantt Chart Work?

Key Concepts of a Gantt Chart

The Critical Path

Milestones

Dependencies

Resource Management

How to Create a Gantt Chart in 4 Steps

Step 1: Define Project Outcome and Time Range

Step 2: Identify all Essential Project Tasks

Step 3: Identify Relationships between Tasks

Step 4: Add Dates, Resources, and Milestones

How to Use a Gantt Chart to Plan a Project

Step 5: Conduct Workflow Analysis

Step 6: Identify Critical Path

Step 7: Make Your Project More Manageable

Step 8: Meet Deadlines

Step 9: Monitor Project Progress

Top 3 Gantt Chart Software for Project Management

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) for How to Use a Gantt Chart

Bottom Line – How to Use a Gantt Chart

What Is Scope Creep?