In project management, developing an efficient schedule is very important. A good schedule will let the stakeholders of the project to use their time wisely to deliver results. Moreover, it also ensures that the project life cycle will be able to meet the necessary deadline.
To develop a schedule, project managers need to analyze activity sequences, resource requirements, durations and schedule constraints to create the project schedule. The advantage of this process is that by using different inputs and resources like schedule activities, duration, logical relationship and resource ability with the scheduling tool, it creates a schedule model with the planned dates for completing the project activities.
There are different project management tools and techniques involved in developing a schedule and these include the schedule network analysis, critical path method, critical chain method, resource optimization techniques, modeling techniques, leads and lags, schedule compression and scheduling tool.
Once project managers are able to develop a schedule for their projects, it will lead to different yet critically important outputs which include generation of schedule baseline, project schedule, schedule data, project calendars, project document updates and project management plan updates. All of these outputs are necessary for schedule plan management.
Developing a project schedule is an iterative activity. This means that one activity cannot proceed without completing it. However, you can also assign tasks to schedules that are not constrained by time. Doing projects without following a schedule is like driving without having any idea on how you are going to get to your destination. The thing is that no matter the size of the project, having a good schedule is important in project management. An adequately planned schedule tells you when an activity should be done or when it should have been finished.
This term is defined in the 5th edition of the PMBOK.