In a business environment increasingly pressured by time efficiency as a key competitive advantage, schedule management in projects and programs has become a critical competency. However, project and program scheduling it is still an immature discipline in many project-based organizations. Schedules are very often developed based on empirical approaches, without following well-established international standards and best practices. Many organizations do not develop their own internal scheduling standards to support time management in their projects and programs. Therefore, project and program professionals involved in developing and using schedules for management purposes often are not qualified and do not have the necessary knowledge, skills and expertise to make adequate use of schedule models to support management decisions aimed at making projects and programs to deliver the scope and benefits on time.

Proper scheduling requires the consideration of various elements of effective time-management, namely: activity and schedule duration estimation, integration with scope definition and management, establishing activities’ progress criteria, using internal and external dependencies, integration with resource estimation and management, integration with cost estimation and management, integration with risk analysis and management, and integration with communications management, performance reporting and with performance management ultimately sustaining Earned Value Management implementation.

This course covers exhaustively all the above elements and offers and hands-on approach, with real life examples, to effective project and program schedule development and delay management.