Examining schedules

After creating a schedule, carefully re-examine the task list, task durations, and task dependencies. It is best to discover and resolve any omissions, errors, or conflicts before you submit the schedule to a client or begin work. On a daily basis, review the schedule and adjust it to reflect the actual progress of the project.

In general, review how time is budgeted for tasks. If the client has approved the schedule and you have assigned resources, review the resource assignments as well.

• Identify the critical path.
• Determine the project finish date. To meet a specific finish date, you might need to accelerate the schedule.
• Determine if any tasks are missing.
• Determine if any tasks are out of order.
• Make sure that tasks are assigned dependencies. Check the dependency of tasks that start on the first day or continue to the end of the project.
• Remove fixed dates. For most tasks, the start date is determined by the dependency assigned to its predecessor task, not a fixed date.
• Examine the resource allocation for each task. Have you assigned resources to each task? Are adequate resources allocated to complete the task on time?