Schedule Projects › How to Develop Project Schedules

How to Develop Project Schedules

You can use some of the following steps to develop a realistic schedule:

1. Adjust the resource calendars to define work days and holidays for each resource.
2. Autoschedule the project without constraints on resource availability.
3. Autoschedule the project again with constraints on resource availability to eliminate any resource overcommitment.
4. Prioritize phases, activities, and tasks.
5. Recalculate the duration of inherently overcommitted tasks, keeping in mind that you cannot recalculate the duration of tasks with fixed resource assignments.
6. Lock tasks that you do not want rescheduled.
7. Refine your use of resource loading patterns.
8. Adjust task priority.
9. Autoschedule the project again with constraints to resource availability.
10. If needed, complete one of the following steps, and autoschedule the project again:
    • Manually adjust the schedule by shifting tasks.
    • Refine the dependency relationships.