Your effectiveness as a project manager is determined by your ability to execute your project under the budget. The task of achieving this depends on how you can maximize your plans by creating and optimizing each of the project schedules. Without this, the task of achieving your project goals becomes an illusion.
The project management calendar is all you need to effectively manage the schedules of your project to meet the expectations of your clients.
According to the project statistics, only 2.5% of projects meet their initial planning. This poor result clearly shows the inability of the project managers to plan with a project calendar.
Furthermore, according to project management knowledge, the use of the project management calendar helps in outlining the milestones of your project. As a project manager, you can view the date and other crucial details for an event like a meeting. This also includes the due date, status of activity and the person to whom the activity is assigned.
The use of the calendar project management tool allows you to have full control over your project and simplifies the process of achieving the goals of your project.
For instance, online project management tools are suitable for project managers in creating their project management calendar that aids them to meet the deadlines of their projects.
Also, they are planning tools that boost effective collaboration among the team members thereby building the right synergy that ensures that they are on the same page in their bid to achieve the goals of the project.
Índice
The impact of the project management calendar on your project team
The integration of the project management calendar into your project allows every member of the team access to the timeline structure of the project activities at any point in time.
This ensures transparency in the execution of the project thereby allowing the project team to be more accountable. It is useful for managing complex projects as it enables you to emphasize the important tasks of the project.
However, some project managers always encounter difficulties in planning with a calendar. These difficulties include managing the unknown events and changes that could happen in the project.
However, below are the five keys to develop an effective project planning calendar:
- Carry out your comprehensive plan with your team: the project team should come together to brainstorm on their plans for the project. Here, the project milestones will be identified.
- Break down the milestones
- Assign the task to the members: With a project management tool, you can use the panel on it to manage the team’s workload to attain better performance. Again, it can be used to check the availability of your workforce.
- Decide on the due date of the tasks
- Add the resources to be used. You can manage the cost of your resources to ensure that your projects do not exceed the budget provision with a project management tool.
- Track and monitor the activities: this allows the proper adherence to the plans to ensure that nothing is left out. This is achieved with the Kanban board of the project management tool. It will effectively track the activities of your team until they are completed.
Kanban Dashboard
The following are the importance of project management calendar:
- The use of the project management calendar in your project will aid the optimization of project work thereby saving you a lot of money and time in the process.
- It helps in scheduling tasks: the best project management calendar will aid in scheduling the activities of your project among your team members. You can add unscheduled project tasks to your schedule and add start and due dates to them.
- It helps in identifying the critical path of your project by prioritizing the activities of your project.
- Also, it helps create the staff shifts, you can get to see the available workers and the resources required for the tasks.
- It assists in the management of the project resources: the project management calendar enables you to be in the know of who is available at any point in time. Also, you can get to see what every person is undertaking and schedule the complex project around the availability of the workforce.
- It aids in the addition of time estimates for each task for the team members to understand the amount of time that a particular project will take to complete.
It is important to choose a tool that has easy-to-use and intuitive features in implementing your project management calendar for your team. An example is Sinnaps, it can be used with ease and has an intuitive interface.
Project planning calendar: how it enhances better project management
In reality, to fail to plan adequately in your project is to prepare to fail. Project planning calendar aids in achieving the effective scheduling that is paramount to the success of your project.
It assists you in assigning the right resources to the tasks of your project. Also, the project planning calendar enhances the smooth communication of the project plan to relevant stakeholders.
In project management, you are bound to confront bottlenecks but the project planning calendar will help you in overcoming them by effectively planning and prioritizing your activities.
The project planning calendar will painstakingly plan your daily activities by specifying the tasks that should be carried out and the resources required. This creates a visual timeline for easy project management.
For example, Sinnaps is suitable for managing multiple projects. It will assist in keeping the information about each of the projects in an organized format thereby making it easy for you to manage multiple projects from the same page.
Gantt chart calendar Excel
Gantt chart calendar Excel is a useful tool for project managers in planning and scheduling their projects. Gantt chart in software engineering, for example helps to streamline the entire process, leading to greater results and delivery of expected product.
In the Gantt chart calendar Excel, you have a tool that can be used to manage the strategic planning process of your project. It will visualize the completed and current activities schedule of your project.
It is a collaborative tool that can be edited easily in real-time. It will incorporate the dates, tasks, phases, milestones, and dependencies to aid your decision-making process.
Gantt chart calendar with Sinnaps
Gantt chart Excel gives an illustration of the work breakdown structure of your project by showing the start and finish dates and the different relationships between the activities the task against their scheduled time.
In a project management calendar Excel, you have a tool with ease of use feature. You can easily download a spreadsheet on it by clicking on a single button. The project management calendar will list out the tasks of your project and their start and end dates. Also, it helps track the progress of your project. Also, it can compare the estimated task dates and the actual dates.
Furthermore, the project tracking calendar is effective for tracking the activities of your project to ensure that everything is working accordingly. It serves as a gauge for measuring the expected results against actual results.
Gantt chart calendar Excel
Download a Excel Project Management Template
Resource calendar project management
The need to maximize the resources of their project has spurred project teams to embrace resource calendar project management. It creates a timetable that displays how human and material resources are utilized in the project.
Resource calendar project management will showcase how the resources of your projects are being consumed with different illustrations such as graphs and charts. With this, you can make vital decisions about your project.
Example of resources graph in your plan
What is obtainable in project management in Calendar/software?
A free project management calendar is available to small and medium organizations to organize and manage the activities of their projects.
- Flexible
- Easily accessed by the team
- Collaborative
- Workflow optimized
- Monthly project planner
- Monitor the progress of your project
These are calendar project management tools that are flexible and can be easily accessed by the project team.
Furthermore, the use of project management calendar software offers you a scheduling solution that ensures collaboration and effective workflow. On it, you can create, visualize, and manage tasks with ease. It allows you to do away with manual scheduling on a spreadsheet and on the platform.
Examples of the project management calendar software are Wrike, Sinnaps, Workzone, Jira, and Mavenlink.
Monthly project planner aids in the creation of the timeline of what you want to achieve as a team in your project over a month. It can plan out the workflow of your activities over a month. You can use it to monitor the progress of your project daily for over a month.
A monthly planner online is a template available to the project team to plan their project schedules. It can serve as a visual reminder to ensure effective project management.
A project planner scheduler can be used in designing schedules for complex projects. It will spell out the work that should be carried out by the project team and the time-frame required.
Online Project Management Course
You will receive 5 lessons over the course of 15 days.
Lesson 3: How to go from ideal to realistic planning
