Pre-development Project Schedule Preparation Process

Objectives

Scheduling and tracking of project planning, and requirements analysis and design activities are as important as scheduling and tracking of core development and testing activities. So, the Pre-development schedule is prepared right after the project kickoff for the following objectives:

• To schedule the planning and analysis & design activities
• To facilitate tracking and monitoring of planning and analysis & design activities

Process Entry/Exit Criteria

Process Inputs/Outputs

Tasks

1. Project Manager prepares a Pre-development schedule using standard Project Schedule template
2. Project Manager defines the pre-development activities using Project Schedule template that includes:
   • Project Plan preparation and review
   • Risk Plan preparation and review
   • Configuration Management Plan preparation and review
   • Requirement Analysis and Design Spec preparation and review
   • Requirement Traceability Matrix preparation and review
   • Scope Creep Assessment and estimation sheet update
3. Project Manager assigns effort and duration to each activity on the basis of estimation sheet and Proposal/Statement of Work.
4. Project Manager assigns resources to carry out each activity.
5. Project Manager identifies task dependencies and defines predecessors to develop a critical path.
6. Project Manager defines the project milestones as specified in the Proposal/Statement of Work or Project Plan.
7. Project Manager sends the pre-development schedule to Development Manager for review and approval.
8. Development Manager reviews and approves the Project Schedule.
9. If some issues are identified during the Development Manager review, Development Manager may update the schedule himself or sends the review comments to Project Manager to update the schedule.
10. Project Manager updates and resubmits the Project Schedule to Development Manager for approval.
11. Development Manager sends an approval email to Project Manager.
12. Project Manager saves the project schedule baseline for pre-development tasks.
13. Project Manager communicates the pre-development schedule to the assigned resources and other relevant stakeholders.

Guidelines for Schedule Preparation

1. Always use the MS project based standard template for the Project Schedule because it contains all the standard processes tasks required to be monitored.
2. For Schedule preparation, the following columns should be inserted in the MS Project.
3. Project schedule baseline should be saved after approval in order to calculate variances.
4. After saving the baseline, following baseline columns should be inserted:
   • Baseline duration
   • Baseline Work
   • Baseline Start
   • Baseline Finish
5. For tracking purpose, following columns may be inserted:
   • Actual Start
   • Actual Finish
   • Actual Duration
   • Actual Work
   • % Complete
   • % Work Complete
6. Milestones that are committed with the customer should be reflected as a milestone in the Project Schedule as well.
7. The task with duration more than a week should be broken up into subtasks to facilitate tracking.
8. Development schedule may also be prepared at this stage if Project Manager has sufficient visibility of development related tasks. However, the baseline of predevelopment tasks cannot be delayed due to the development schedule.