Chapter 6. Managing Project Time

Time has a funny way of slipping up on you—and then easing on by. As a project manager, you've got stakeholders, project team members, and management all worried about your project deliverables, how the project is moving forward, and when, oh when, the project will be done. You've also got vacations, sick days, demands from other project managers, and delays from vendors to deal with.

Management frets over how much a project will cost. Project customers fret over the deliverables the project will create. Everyone, as it turns out, frets over how long the project will take. Of course I'm talking about the triple constraints of project management: cost, scope, and time. If any one of these constraints is out of balance with the other angles, the project is likely not going to succeed. Time, as it happens, is often the toughest of the three angles to manage, because interruptions come from all sides of the project.

Your Project Management Institute (PMI) exam and this chapter will focus on six key project management activities within the confines of project time management. The activities within project time, like much of project management, are interdependent on one another and on other processes in the project management life cycle.

Of course, there's no time like the present, so let's get into project time management right now!