Effective Time Management - Research Paper Example

IMPORTANCE OF THE NEED TO ACHIEVE EFFECTIVE TIME MANAGEMENT Introduction Time management is a critical skill necessary for any project manager, who intends to successfully accomplish the task. Regardless of the company one is operating from, project managers can get to ensure productivity by avoiding time wastage, which is supported by other skills, techniques, and tools in project management. However, some prior activities like preparation before execution of the project could affect time management and effectively the productivity (Goff, 2009). Meaning some of the requirements, especially those required at the starting phases of the project should be in place when they are necessary, to prevent future conflicts. Projects are of different types; reengineering, construction, procurements, research and business implementation projects among others, and may either take short or long durations. Often, when there is poor time management, there are high chances of being overloaded with many tasks that the workers in the project have to heavily multitask hence increasing chances of errors, always working late to hit the set deadlines, which can be stressing, or probably experiencing crisis now and then while implementing the projects. Proper time management facilitates quality productive work and assists the manager and the workforce to avoid rushing and solves issues to do with stress in work. To achieve standard productivity, right from time management, the combined effort of the leadership, workforce, budgeting, tools and techniques, and associated processes have to be efficient and effective, to successfully deliver the required quality of end product. Importance of Achieving Effective Time Management Productivity, delivery, and success of a project are aspects that are determined by earlier plans and management in the project resources, scope, and other factors. When the initiation, planning, and execution are successfully achieved and controlled, then the completion phase which gives the end product, quality delivery, and success in the general project is attained without crisis. There are many factors that influence all these activities, but with effective time management every crisis is managed and the positive factors are used to perfect the project accomplishment. Badiru identifies the eight functional areas that embody project management practice; scope, time, quality, cost, communication, human resources, contract, and risk that have to be managed for their influence in project implementation, productivity, and successful delivery (1996). Other factors affecting success are leadership and organization. With effective time management, the management allocates not only the activities the required time to be performed, but finds quality time to assess the project progress; this is because time management allows one to become flexible enough, being where or doing what one is required to do at the right time. Divakar and Subramanian classify the critical success factors as strategic (project mission and scheduling, and top management support) and tactical (personnel selection and training, and client consultation) (2009). Basically, the effort, plans, and motivations set in the process of planning projects determine the final actions to complete it. An effective time management guides the managers and team in the projects to work according to the schedule. Meaning it puts pressure on them to remain persistent in work, especially if they are headed in right direction. Sometimes, the human resource are the best implementers and cause of failures in many projects; hence the leadership has to be organized and effective enough to manage any crisis associated with the human capital, for timely delivery and quality product achievement. Time management also allows managers to allocate sufficient resources to various tasks, prioritize, and concentrate on the right activities in the defined time, hence improving the quality and efficiency in the projects. Just like in personal time management, through the help of the scheduled activities, it becomes easier to identify a project heading towards a disaster or being involved in unproductive tasks and can be rectified as soon as possible. This imposes restriction with time and constant review of the progress to ensure correct sequencing of activities, efficient use of available resources and making changes or additional activities in case of a needy situation in the project. Effective time management promotes team cooperation and delegation of activities among the team members, to achieve a common objective in the complex projects. Processes that Influence Project Time Management Planning: time is an important resource for everyone and when wasted, the pressure arising from the work not only affects the leadership, but also the entire time. Therefore, there is the need for scheduling activities to guide the project to a standard delivered output. This has to be accomplished through use of estimated timing of the project (duration), required resources, and the cost in general. According to the Project Management Institute, project time management consists of six processes that occur at least once in every project or its phases; they include definition of activities, sequencing of activities, estimate of activities resources, estimate of activities duration, schedule development, and finally its control (2012). The first five fall under the planning process and depend on each other for their achievement. As part of planning, all the activities that are supposed to be performed to produce the deliverables should be identified early in time. Definition of activities is the determinant of all the following processes and when an activity is missed out, it means it would not be allocated the time, which is a constraint and would definitely affect other factors like cost and scope. Definition of activities not only affects project deliverables achievements, but the break down of work into individual schedule, and the development of the activity list used to develop the other remaining processes in time management (pm-primer.com, n.d.). Sequencing of activities depends on the activity list created in the preceding process and is crucial arrangement of the activities, to prevent conflicts with future activities and running out of time and resources. These are some of the problems that management face when planning of the execution of the activities was not properly considered; such that some tasks that would have limited excessive use of resources and still done efficiently are missed out, or endeavored in short time activities only to run out of time in the long tasks, due to poor establishment of dependencies. It cannot be avoided and is very important in the establishment of dependencies between the activities and must be done, so that the team and management can use the critical path analysis (Schwalbe, 2010). With proper sequencing of activities, some of the tasks can be done parallel to one another; some even get to overlap, while others have to be completed before others begin, all having an influence on time management in projects. Estimating activities resources affects the input directed to completion of work and effectively the time taken. The resources used consists of machines, men as the workforce, and materials among others required in the project environment, meaning the managers have a choice to use the best type and enough quantity of the resources, to deliver good quality output within the constrained time. Remember the nature of projects varies from one another, some being complex while others are simple, but could be operating within either short or longer periods. Such factors, including the organization determine estimation of resources and time of project completion. Estimating activities durations is a process that ensures each work activity has an associated time for its completion, where the time or duration is used to prepare the schedule (cmu.edu, n.d.). As such, it is important to make realistic estimates of the duration by considering similar past performance and chances of variation and elapsed time. Realistic estimates of activities duration would lead to development of an effective working schedule that would facilitate completion of projects in time. However, actual delay of an activity completion would affect the consequent activities, hence varying from the estimated activity duration and affecting the time management. The final process in planning group is development of a schedule that depends on all the previous processes; meaning if an error was made earlier, it ends up being part of the developed schedule that demonstrate the starting and ending dates of every activity and entirely the project. It is all about ensuring that all factors of previous processes and schedule constraints are considered, so that the output generated in the process get to be used as the schedule baseline from which the actual project progress can be tracked. According to Abugosh, “a carelessly planned project will take three times longer to complete than expected, but a carefully planned project may take only twice as long” (2010, p.5). Planning is essential to guide the project course towards the set goals and objectives. It prevents the single activities and the project from meeting a crisis while in execution, and while striving to ensure its completion in the right standard of quality and time. Monitoring and controlling process: The schedule control is part of the process and is concerned with finding opportunities for change, and controlling the changes in the schedule. The effect is that it could alter the timing of the project, if some changes were made or included due to past omissions that probably affect sequencing and duration of activities. Kloppenborg states that in monitoring and controlling, data is collected to evaluate progress, so that any needed corrective action is determined (2012). Controlling and managing the changes requires extra time and other constrained resources, which are linked to one another. While controlling the changes, some activities could be temporary halted as the room for changes in the project is facilitated; an extra cost in time. If the management is not careful, they may spend much time trying to make the actual results to be relevant to the scheduled baseline or seeking approval to adjust the baseline, which would delay some activities in the project. They have to be ready and quick to react to any crisis not to further contribute to delays. Tools for Effective Time Management In defining the activities, a work break down structure is usually produced, that identifies the deliverables at the end of each decomposed task. There are many tools used in the process like expert judgment that use their expertise to define their activities, use of templates, and finally the popular decomposition tool. Decomposition subdivides the project work packages into smaller manageable components (schedule activities) and allows involvement of team members, which promotes accuracy in the result (Project management institute, 2012). Basically, there are many tools that support time management; project managers should choose tools that best fit their management style and most especially, the one that effectively meets the demand of the projects needs. Sequencing of activities use the precedence diagram method (PDM), arrow diagram method (ADM), schedule network templates, dependency determination, and applying lead and lag (preparepm.com, n,d). The PDM and ADM are much accepted for their efficient use in the critical path while constructing the project schedule network diagram. PDM uses nodes to represent the activities, which are connected with arrows to show the dependencies; ADM uses the arrows to represent the activities that are connected at the nodes to show the dependencies (project management institute, 1996). Expert judgment techniques are commonly used in estimation of the activities duration and resources, but simulation in estimating durations using varying sets of assumptions also guide project time management. In schedule development, the two most employed tools for mathematical analysis are the critical path method (CPM), and project evaluation and Review technique (PERT); others are simulation and project management software. PERT and CPM allow the management to be able to calculate the starting and fishing time of the project activities as a theoretical procedure before and after the projects completion; hence roughly indicating the period of time within which the activity should be scheduled. With PERT and CPM tools, the manager gets to know which activities can occur in parallel with each other, the order in which the activities should occur, improve forecast on project completion time, and general planning (Maserang, 2002). It entails calculation of the expected activity duration by finding the average of the optimistic, pessimistic and most likely estimates. The PERT also assists the managers to reflect changes when there are delays, due to time allowing the adjustments to stay on the schedule. See the PERT chart below. (Maserang, 2002). The critical path method is a tool used to determine the most suitable sequence of activities in projects to successfully complete, while economically making use of time constraint through an efficient route that aid in time management. According to Hiemstra, CPM is used in scheduling, managing, and planning by computing a critical path of activities and determining the time necessary to successfully complete them and the entire project (2000). Gantt charts are also used for project scheduling and comparing the actual performance with the set deadlines. Gantt charts plan time scale for a project, assist in the estimation of the resources required, coordinating, and tracking specific tasks within the project (acornlive.com, n.d). By tracking progress and information gathered from the Gantt chart, targeting potential timeline failure points becomes easy and manageable. Reference List Abugosh, Y., 2010. ABCs of Project Time Management Planning. [online] Available at: http://www.pmi-agc.com/techdocs/ABCs%20of%20Project%20Time%20Management%20Planning.pdf [accessed 26, March 2013]. Badiru, A. B., 1996. Project Management in Manufacturing and High Technology Operations. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Construction Planning. n.d. [online] Available at: http://pmbook.ce.cmu.edu/09_Construction_Planning.html [accessed 26, March 2013]. Define activities. n.d. [online] Available at: http://www.pm-primer.com/pmbok-project-management-body-of-knowledge/pmbok-define-activities/ [accessed 26, March 2013]. Divakar, K., and Subramanian, K., 2009. Critical Success factors in the real time monitoring of construction projects. [online] Available at: http://maxwellsci.com/print/rjaset/%282%2935-39.pdf [accessed 27, March 2013]. Goff, S. 2009. Everything I Know About Project Time Management I Learned In Sports Car Racing. [online] Available at: http://www.asapm.org/asapmag/articles/EverythingIKnow.pdf [accessed 26, March 2013]. Hiemstra, R., 2000. Critical Path Analysis: A Planning/ Time Management Tool for managing Research. [online] Available at: http://www-distance.syr.edu/edu5900cpa.html [accessed 27, March 2013]. Kloppenborg, T., 2012. Contemporary Project Management. 2nd ed. Mason, OH: South Western Cengage Learning. Maserang, S., 2002. Project Management: Tools and Techniques. [online] Available at: http://www.umsl.edu/~sauterv/analysis/488_f02_papers/ProjMgmt.html [accessed 27, March 2013]. Preparempm.com Tutorial- Project time management. n.d. [online] Available at: http://www.preparepm.com/notes/time.html [accessed 27, March 2013]. Project Management Institute. 2012. Project Time Management: Study Notes. [online] Available at: http://www.pmstudy.com/trainingdocs2/TimeManagement.pdf [accessed 26, March 2013]. Project Management Institute. 1996. Project Time management. [online] Available at: http://www.preparepm.com/notes/time.html [accessed 27, March 2013]. Schwalbe, K., 2010. Information Technology Project Management. 6th Ed. Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. Tools and Techniques of Project management. n.d. [online] Available at: http://www.acornlive.com/demos/pdf/E2_EM_Chapter_7.pdf [accessed 27, March 2013]. Read More