6.5 Develop Schedule

Combine the activities, their order, and their durations into one schedule.

Planning / Schedule · ← PMBOK reference · See it on the map

Why it matters

This is the step that finally answers 'when do we finish,' by pulling every earlier scheduling decision together into one calendar the team can commit to.

What done looks like

A baseline schedule exists showing dates for every activity and the project finish.

First time tip

Find the critical path before you promise a finish date. It tells you exactly which activities have zero room to slip.

What you need (Inputs)

• Schedule Management Plan
• Activity List
• Activity Attributes
• Project Schedule Network Diagram
• Duration Estimates
• Resource Calendars
• Risk Register

How you do it (Tools & Techniques)

• Schedule Network Analysis
• Critical Path Method
• Resource Optimization
• Schedule Compression
• Leads and Lags
• Agile Release Planning

What you get (Outputs)

• Schedule Baseline
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: the current sprint's committed window (driftless/models/delivery.py:Sprint) for an agile project, or the department's own recurring work (driftless/models/operations.py:RecurringWork) for an operations-cadence one — an agile team's schedule is the sprint it has committed to, not a fixed baseline; an operations-cadence project's schedule is the cadence the department already runs
• Project Schedule
  How Scrum/Kanban projects satisfy this — counted from: releases (driftless/models/agile.py:Release) — a release with a target date is the agile reading of a project schedule when there is no sprint or milestone to read one from
• Schedule Data
• Project Calendars

Worked example

Pulled together, the activities put demolition and paint in March and the shelving in May, when the supplier can deliver. The critical path runs through the wall repair, so its two-to-five-day range is the range on the whole finish date.

Common pitfalls

• Promising a finish date before the critical path shows what has no slack.
• Building a calendar that ignores when the supplier can actually deliver.
• Baselining a schedule nobody who has to work to it has seen.

How driftless helps

• Schedule Network Analysis can be run here.
• Critical Path Method can be run here.
• Resource Optimization can be run here.
• Schedule Compression can be run here.
• Leads and Lags can be run here.
• Agile Release Planning can be run here.
• Schedule Baseline can be created in the wizard.
• Project Schedule can be created in the wizard.