Summary

Establish and maintain the project’s budget and schedule.

Description

The budget and schedule are based on developed estimates and ensure that budget allocation, task complexity, and task dependencies are appropriately addressed.

Event driven, resource-limited schedules have proven to be effective in dealing with risk. Identifying accomplishments to be demonstrated before initiation of an event provides some flexibility in the timing of the event, a common understanding of what is expected, a better vision of the state of the work, and a more accurate status of the work tasks.

The subpractices and example work products of this specific practice should be interpreted both at the overall service level and within each service type as appropriate. That is, individual service requests (e.g., to repair a piece of equipment in a remote facility, transport a package to a destination) can have individual milestones, task dependencies, resource allocations, and scheduling constraints that should be considered together and in coordination with the larger budgeting and scheduling activities.

Example Work Products



  1. Schedules
  2. Schedule dependencies
  3. Budget


Subpractices



1. Identify major milestones.

Milestones are pre-planned events or points in time at which a thorough review of status is conducted to understand how well stakeholder requirements are being met. (If the work includes a developmental milestone, then the review is conducted to ensure that the assumptions and requirements associated with that milestone are being met.) Milestones can be associated with the overall service or a particular service type or instance. Milestones can thus be event based or calendar based. If calendar based, once agreed, milestone dates are often difficult to change.



2. Identify schedule assumptions.

When schedules are initially developed, it is common to make assumptions about the duration of certain activities. These assumptions are frequently made on items for which little if any estimation data are available. Identifying these assumptions provides insight into the level of confidence (i.e., uncertainties) in the overall schedule.



3. Identify constraints.

Factors that limit the flexibility of management options should be identified as early as possible. The examination of the attributes of work products and tasks often bring these issues to the surface. Such attributes can include task duration, resources, inputs, and outputs.



4. Identify task dependencies.

Frequently, the tasks for a project or service can be accomplished in some ordered sequence that minimizes the duration. This sequencing involves the identification of predecessor and successor tasks to determine optimal ordering.

 

Examples of tools and inputs that can help determine optimal ordering of task activities include the following:
  • Critical Path Method (CPM)
  • Program Evaluation and Review Technique (PERT)
  • Resource-limited scheduling
  • Customer priorities
  • User value



5. Establish and maintain the budget and schedule.

 

Establishing and maintaining the budget and schedule typically includes the following:
  • Defining the committed or expected availability of resources and facilities
  • Determining the time phasing of activities
  • Determining a breakout of subordinate schedules
  • Defining dependencies among activities (predecessor or successor relationships)
  • Defining schedule activities and milestones to support work monitoring and control
  • Identifying milestones, releases, or increments for the delivery of products to the customer
  • Defining activities of appropriate duration
  • Defining milestones of appropriate time separation
  • Defining a management reserve based on the confidence level in meeting the schedule and budget
  • Using appropriate historical data to verify the schedule
  • Defining incremental funding requirements
  • Documenting assumptions and rationale



6. Establish corrective action criteria.

Criteria are established for determining what constitutes a significant deviation from the work plan. A basis for gauging issues and problems is necessary to determine when corrective action should be taken. Corrective actions can lead to replanning, which may include revising the original plan, establishing new agreements, or including mitigation activities in the current plan. The work plan defines when (e.g., under what circumstances, with what frequency) the criteria will be applied and by whom.