2019 Time Management Techniques for Project Managers

There is a saying that “Time and tide wait for no man” or even “An ounce of gold will not buy an inch of time”. This means that an individual should understand the value of time to succeed in all areas of life. Time management is defined as managing the time effectively so that the right time is allocated to the right activity. It plays a very important role not only in the organization but also in our personal lives. This is why there are time management techniques which can be used and some these are a really important part of project management as well.

Rules of Time Management

This involves different steps as follows:

1. Effective Planning

Without an effective plan, there is no control. Likewise, without time planning, you cannot manage things properly.

 2. Setting Goals and Objectives

3. Setting Deadlines

4. Delegation of Responsibilities

5. Prioritizing activities

6. Spending the right time on the right activity

Effective time management techniques involve one to be focused, organized and make use of time properly.

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Time Management Techniques

There are numerous time management techniques in the industry. These time management techniques used in the right manner can help you boost your productivity. Most of the project managers use project management tool options as well to manage time effectively when they are managing the projects.

We will be listing a few techniques which will help you in effective time management:

1. Getting Things Done

 One of the time management techniques is a five-step method to convert tasks into straightforward ‘To Do” list.

The advantage of this time management technique is that all tasks, assignments, and projects are kept in perspective while laying out, so your mind is free and all tasks are laid in front of you.

The disadvantage of this technique is that you will not able to structure your day properly if there are too many items on the list.

2. Eat that frog

This technique aims at prioritizing tasks. First, pick the most important or worst task (This is your frog). Now tackle it as first thing tomorrow. Once you have finished with your frog, you can then move on to other tasks for that day but not before.

It works in a way that you have to identify tasks based on priority and label them.

The advantage of this technique is that prioritizing task becomes easier, also doing the most important or worst task firstly guarantees the accomplishment of the rest of the items with ease

The disadvantage of this technique is that if most important task changes during the course of the day then it will become impractical.

3. Kanban

This is one of the visual time management techniques that help you track the project. It means that you can track how the tasks move across differently labeled columns. Japan developed this to increase productivity and time management in the manufacturing industry.

The way to use this technique is to take project management software, whitepaper, sticky notes, a pen, and paper.

Now determine the number of stages in your project and create columns accordingly.

Create 4 columns and move task within a project across the stages mentioned as follows:

The advantage of this technique is that it gives a clear visual representation of entire work that needs to be done along with progress made so far.

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The disadvantage of this technique is that it can be time-consuming. Besides, it may be difficult to predict when your team will finish the task or project because it is using a measure of progress as moving across the columns. Furthermore, it doesn’t order the task in terms of importance and urgency.

4. Timeboxing

This technique works on the bases of timeboxes. Timeboxing often includes fixed deadlines so project managers generally use it.

It works in a way that you allocate time periods (timeboxes) to activities, you work within this time period and then stop once the set time runs out.

The steps are:

The advantage of this technique is that it works for a large number of small tasks. Also, it will be easier to keep track of them and tackle them. Further, as deadlines are an important component, so you can focus on achieving as much as you can until the timebox expires.

The disadvantage of this time management technique is that timeboxing doesn’t allow multitasking so you will be able to focus on one task at a time. Besides, it may be challenging to stick to a strict schedule based on timeboxes when there are unavoidable disturbances such as phone calls.

5. Who’s Got the Monkey

This technique is based on delegating tasks. It is generally used by project managers. Here monkeys are tasks and you need to consider how to deal with them.

3 types of monkeys and management time defined as follows:

Now your aim is to eliminate subordinate-imposed time, control system and boss imposed time, and increase the discretionary time.

The steps are:

The advantage of this technique is that managers can effectively use their time. It gives a clear perspective on who is assigned to what. Besides, it is a straightforward way of delegating tasks.

The disadvantage of this technique is that it deals only with management and delegating tasks. Though, it should be combined with other time management techniques for better productivity results overall.

What Are The Time Management Techniques for Project Managers?

Time management for project managers requires planning, scheduling, monitoring and controlling of all project activities. It can also be defined as the management of time spent on the task and progress tracked on tasks and activities.

As per Project Management Institute, Time Management is one of major functions of project management.

Why it is important for Project Managers?

By definition, a project has an official start and end date. Now in order to meet this end date, every project needs a plan or schedule. Therefore every project manager needs to manage the time to ensure that the schedule is met.

For instance, you take a project to renovate the office. Assuming that you will do it in your spare time and therefore you don’t give yourself an end date. Hence you don’t create a project schedule. Also, you don’t regularly do anything to make sure that work is getting done in the office. Now, what will happen?

The answer is that time will pass and years will go on and the project will never get finished. It is faced with delays and issues for this delay could be as follows:

Hence time management is really critical. Without time management, the project won’t get done on time and may not get done at all.

As per Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), there are 6 main processes in Time Management:

1. Plan Schedule Management

This process involves documenting how you will plan, manage and control the project to the schedule baseline and how you will manage schedule variances.

Here Schedule Management plan is the output of this process. It is part of the project management plan and it helps in estimating and scheduling development process faster by including the following:

2. Define Activities

This process involves taking the work packages created in Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) and decomposing them into the activities that are required to produce the work package deliverables and thus achieve the project objectives

One of the time management techniques is using decomposition to break work packages into activities.

Rolling wave planning is a technique you can use when it is better not to plan the entire project to the smallest detail in advance. Instead to plan to a higher level and then develop more detailed plans when work is to be done. It is a form of progressive elaboration.

3. Sequence Activities

This process involves taking the activities and sequencing them in order in which work will be performed. The result is a network diagram or project schedule network diagram.

Techniques used to draw this network diagram is PDM i.e. Precedence Diagramming Method

Precedence Diagramming Method (PDM): This method involves nodes or boxes to represent activities and arrows show activity dependencies. There are 4 types of relationships between activities such as Finish to Start (FS), Start to Start (SS), Finish to Finish (FF) and Start to Finish (SF)

You can determine the sequence of activities based on mandatory dependency, discretionary dependency, internal or external dependency and leads n lags.

4. Estimate Activity Duration

When activities have been defined and sequenced then it is the time to estimate how long each activity will take.

You can estimate using time management techniques such as One-point estimating, Analogous estimating, Parametric Estimating, Heuristics, Three-Point Estimating, Bottom Up Estimating and Reserve Analysis.

Reserve Analysis: You can add 2 types of reserves to the schedule i.e. Contingency Reserves and Management Reserve

Contingency Reserve: These reserves are for knowns & unknowns. They are included in the project schedule baseline. They are allocated for identified risks remaining after the responses of risk have been identified.

Management Reserve: They are additional funds and time to cover unforeseen risks that could impact the ability to meet the schedule. They are not part of the schedule baseline.

5. Develop Schedule

Once you complete the network diagram and activity duration estimates, then you need to put the information into scheduling software within the project management information system (PMIS) to create a schedule model.

The schedule model includes all the project data used to calculate schedules such as activities, duration estimates, dependencies, leads, and lags. The project schedule is the output of the schedule model and it consolidates all schedule data.

Representation of schedule includes bar charts and milestone charts.

The schedule is calendar based, approved and realistic. Because it includes all the activities needed to complete the work of the project as well as contingency reserves to manage risk events. The technique used here is the Schedule Network Analysis. Schedule Network Analysis creates the schedule model and ultimately to finalize the project schedule.

The techniques used are:

6. Control Schedule

It involves looking for the things that are causing changes and influencing the sources or root causes of the changes. The activities involved in controlling the schedule are:

This process results in work performance information, schedule forecasts and sometimes change requests. Also, it may result in updates to schedule management plan, performance measurement baseline in addition to project documents such as risk register, assumption log, lesson learned register and changes to any other part of the project.

Tools Used for Time Management

There are various tools to manage the time effectively on the project. In turn, they help the projects to meet the deadlines:

How to Deal With Delays in Project Management?

Despite you have laid the best plans and project timelines, sometimes a project experiences delay. The causes are generally an underestimated task, some resources that are not allocated appropriately or some staff leaving in the middle of the project, etc. No matter what is the cause of the delay, as a project manager, you have to get things back on track.

There are different ways to deal with such kind of delays in project management.

All these time management techniques and processes are taught in the PMP training in a very detailed way. If you are working as a project manager or want to work as one, it is ‘time’ to get PMP certified while learning all the time management techniques and everything else used in project management!