When planning out a project, the primary investment that most people want to know is the financial cost that will be needed. Of course, this is a vital aspect of any project. If you don’t have the funds to invest, then you cannot continue with the project. However, planning out your time for the project is just as important. 

The fact is, you will have to invest time, as well as money, into any project. How much work is involved should also play a part in planning out the project and determining if it’s feasible in the first place. Measuring that time during the project will also play a part in determining if the project is on track. 

Deadlines

Deadlines
Every project should have not just a final deadline, but also deadlines during the overall timeline to meet certain benchmarks. That way your team can be certain that they are on track to finish on time. Deadlines can be for completing certain aspects of the project, or based on your budget. For example, you may want your budget to line up with timelines of your project tasks. Deadlines keep everyone moving forward. Without them, team members may not be as motivated to complete their tasks. This can lead to the project getting bogged down, and eventually stretching much longer than you expected or wanted. 

To-Do Lists and Tasks

To-Do Lists and Tasks
When planning a project, it’s important to understand all of the work involved and how long it will take for everything. You can’t assume something will only take a month if “everyone works fast,” and then be surprised when everything’s not finished. Break every project down by task and assign a timeframe to each task. This is exactly what you would do with your budget. Then, assign those tasks to the appropriate team members. Many of these timelines will overlap, and some of the tasks may depend on the completion of others. At that point, you will have a solid grasp of how long your project should take. 

Performance Metrics

The really important part of measuring both time and cost comes when you are measuring the performance of your project. If you are just measuring your budget as you go, then you are not getting the whole picture on how well your project is coming along. 

As a simple example, take a project that is planned to take six months. If after three months you have spent half of your budget, you might think that everything is on track. However, since you are only measuring cost and not time, you could end up with a surprise when the six months is up and your budget is exhausted. This can happen if at the halfway point you’ve spent half your budget but only completed 30% of the work. This would mean that your project is not on track and you need to make adjustments. 

Tracking both aspects of a project involves earned value management. This allows for project managers to continually monitor the performance of a project and make determinations and adjustments based on how much budget and time has been spent on an ongoing basis. That way, your project can run as efficiently as possible and be more likely to be completed on time. 

Schedule Monitoring

Schedule Monitoring
As a project manager, you must take care to keep everyone on the schedule that you originally mapped out in the planning phase. Assign tasks and due dates and follow up to make sure that your team is on track if there are delays and issues, then you can adapt on the fly and reset the schedule. Hopefully you don’t have to do this too often, and even if you pivot try to keep things close to the original framework. The closer you are to being on-schedule, the more likely you will be to keep on budget. 

Don’t fall into the trap of only factoring in financial investments when it comes to your project management. While your budget may be the most important component of any project, the time investment is just as important. If you are not measuring your timeframes and implementing deadlines, then you are very likely to go over budget and have the project fail as a result.