Projects are time-bound endeavors done to create unique and specific products, services, or results. With time being an implicit constraint, the challenge for an effective project team is to achieve project goals within a defined timeframe.
As with manpower and scope, time is a valuable resource to be managed. Failing to skilfully manage project time can result in inflated project budgets and mismanaged project resources. Alternatively, proper time management can allow for better budgeting, manpower allocation, resource scheduling, and ultimately, smoother processes and better project outcomes.
In this article, we’ll go over the important elements of project management, along with mindsets, tools, and processes you can apply to enhance your project time management skills.
The Basics: Functions of Time Management
Project time management in PMBOK is about ensuring the project is completed on schedule. This involves planning, estimating, scheduling, and controlling.
The Power of Planning
Project planning is where the project team identifies concrete actions that need to be taken for project progress. Planning a project involves identifying its goals and deliverables, plotting project milestones, and mapping out the team’s project strategy.
The goal is to eliminate as many unknowns as possible by laying out relevant tasks, resources, and risks, but this may be more challenging in some project environments than others.
In the book Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, the author shares that Pixar movies rarely resemble their initial concepts, as is often the case for creative endeavors.
When it’s impossible to remove unknowns, it’s in the planning stage that the team aligns on what they’re all trying to achieve, and on their strategy for dealing with inevitable change to incrementally make meaningful progress.
Estimating with Precision
Estimating involves making intelligent projections on the duration of project tasks. These forecasts can be based on historical data or the team’s experience in handling similar or related tasks.
Creating precise estimates is an important foundation before proceeding to the next part of the time management process. When estimates are too low, the project team struggles to complete deliverables on time, which can lead to burnout or low-quality deliverables. On the other hand, when estimates are too high, they might make project proposals unattractive, especially in bidding environments.
Structured Scheduling
Scheduling is the embedding of plans, tasks, and milestones on a concrete timeline. Here, the team starts to see the project activities as parts of their work days, and every element is coordinated so that it’s completed in the most logical order. Dependencies, lead times, and manpower allocation are vital considerations. Proper tooling is crucial, as even small changes can affect several parts of the project.
Control
Project control is a dynamic process that continues throughout your project execution. It’s about aiming to keep actual progress as close to the projected plans as possible. This may involve real-time tracking, proactive troubleshooting, and preempting potential issues that can derail project progress. Consistent team communication is central for effective project control. Mechanisms for feedback, updates, and alignments are vital for project managers to stay on top of project activities and implement adjustments when necessary.
Project Planning Best Practices: Setting Up for Success
Recommended tools: RAID Log, RACI Chart
In the project planning stage, the team aims to align on the project details and identify the project strategy. Below are the best practices you can implement to be effective in this area.
Prioritize Alignment
Key stakeholders can make or break your project operations and outcomes. They’re responsible for speedy resource and deliverable approvals, clear project goals and business impact, and a smooth feedback loop, among others.
Attaining support from key stakeholders during the planning stage can help increase the likelihood of them championing your project’s needs, which can make your progress smoother in the long run.
Collaborate with Cross-Functional Teams
A thorough understanding of all factors at play in a project is crucial for effective planning. So, to fully scope a project out, important functional teams must be represented during planning. When building a website, for example, subject matter experts for the technical and creative aspects of the work are vital to create thorough project plans. However, it’s rare to find just one person who is an expert on both domains. While it might be tedious to manage too many stakeholders, having the right people involved in the early stages of planning can save you from a lot of scope creep and wasted resources in the long run.
Conduct Proactive Risk Identification
Risk is inherent in every project action and decision. Good planning involves a proactive account of these risks so the team can proceed with intention and preparedness. When the likelihood of a risk is high, project managers can ensure that a mitigation strategy is in place. Alternatively, adjusting the team’s approach to avoid the risk altogether.
Consider using a RAID (Risks, Assumptions, Issues, Dependencies) log to structure this analysis.
Establish Clear Project Goals and Objectives
“Clarity about what matters provides clarity about what does not.” - Cal Newport, Deep Work
It can be difficult to plan projects that involve vagueness and uncertainty. But clearly defined goals and objectives can provide essential direction, even while teams navigate an iterative process. When the team thoroughly understands what the project aims to achieve, they will be more equipped to make choices that take the project closer to its goals, one sprint at a time.
Perfecting Estimates: Estimation Best Practices
Recommended tools: Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), PERT Framework, Scrum Poker
Making estimates as accurate as possible is foundational for effective scheduling. Let’s discuss practical ways you can craft estimates that support team productivity.
Apply Strategic Padding
While it’s ideal to have all project details available during planning and estimates, it’s a reality in project management that unforeseen things could happen. Project teams simply need to have the mental readiness and ample project time to resolve them, which is why reasonable buffers are important to consider.
The amount of sufficient task padding would vary based on several factors. For familiar tasks with low dependency on external factors, minimal padding may suffice. But for novel tasks that are heavily dependent on external resources, a larger padding may be necessary.
Balance is crucial when managing time allowances for estimates. While it may give the team wiggle room, adding too much might make the project proposal unattractive, particularly when project bidding is involved.
Reference Historical Performance Data
Historical data can be a great reference, not just for making accurate estimates but also for learning from the experience of project teams that have done similar projects in the past. Documented post-mortems and performance data can help project teams foresee potential issues and come up with better ideas to achieve improved outcomes.
Consider Varied Skill Sets
Project teams are composed of individuals with varying skill levels. When estimating, experienced team members might unintentionally provide low estimates. If a less experienced member ends up tackling the task during project execution, finishing it within the original estimates might prove unrealistic.
Whenever possible, involve the person likely to perform the task to give input when providing project estimates to ensure that it reflects their capacity accurately.
Manage Team Dynamics
Providing work estimates may feel like a vulnerable experience for some. Without the proper mindset, project team members might grow defensive or fearful of judgment.
As a project manager, it’s important to cultivate a culture of trust, openness, honesty, and collaboration to ensure that everyone is working to bring about what’s best for the project. Ask questions when estimates are vague to encourage discourse, and consider involving seniors to help detect technical inconsistencies if there are any.
Ensure Task Clarity
Visualizing how a task is to be done is necessary to provide good estimates. When estimating with your team, encourage this thought process. When a task sounds vague, ask questions to facilitate a more thorough evaluation and potentially unlock more details about the task that the team may not have seen before.
For tasks that are too complex to visualize, break them down further into more digestible elements until they’re concrete enough to estimate more accurately.
Orchestrating Your Timeline: Project Scheduling Best Practices
Tool Recommendations: Gantt Chart
During project scheduling, all project elements are organized into a concrete timeline. Sequence and dependencies are vital considerations, so it’s important to have the right information and tools in place for effective scheduling.
Align with Stakeholder Expectations
When scheduling work, carefully consider stakeholder preferences..
How often do they want to see progress?
Are simple reports enough, or are testable prototypes preferred?
How much lead time is needed to release funds and other project resources?
Client preferences and administrative structures are important considerations when crafting your project schedule. Be sure to align with relevant stakeholders to ensure you have the most crucial resources available.
Add Risk Mitigation Buffers
As with estimates, consider adding buffers to your schedule when possible, especially when you’re confronted with impactful risks that are highly likely to occur. Failing to plan is planning to fail. While it may seem pessimistic to anticipate worst-case scenarios, it is much better to be braced to respond to them than to scramble in panic when they happen.
Consider Using Gantt Charts
Gantt charts remain the gold standard for project time management. It’s a great way to visualize project timelines, dependencies, milestone markers, and task durations in a structured interface. This visual tool enables project managers to quickly identify critical paths, resource conflicts, and schedule compression opportunities.
Keeping Your Project On Track: Project Controlling and Monitoring Best Practices
Recommended tool: Workamajig
Project time management doesn’t end with planning –it continues through tracking, monitoring, and managing, with the aim of keeping actual project progress as close to the plans as possible.
Establish Regular Check-ins
Building consistent feedback loops and communication systems is a great way to stay on top of project progress and be aware of potential issues. In the Agile Scrum methodology, short stand-up meetings are done daily to keep the whole team in the loop on what they’ll be working on that day, and to provide an avenue for them to bring up issues.
Regardless of your team’s chosen methodology, it’s important to establish consistent feedback mechanisms to monitor progress, whether that’s through meetings, detailed dashboards, or unified databases.
Use Sophisticated Project Management Tools
Projects rarely proceed as planned. To facilitate resilience, it’s important to use a tool that can be as flexible as you.
Workamajig is a project management tool built for creative teams. It’s equipped with all the necessary features to create detailed schedules, consolidate feedback and comms, and update stakeholders with real-time project progress.
To up your game in project time management, consider adding Workamajig to your tech stack.
Frequently Asked Questions:
Which software offers project and task management with time tracking?
Workamajig is the only project management software built for creative teams. It’s equipped with features such as task management and time tracking to enable project managers to be on top of schedules and project timelines effectively across all project stages.
In the context of project management, what are time, people, money, and supplies examples of?
Time, people, money, and supplies are examples of project resources that are crucial for progress.
What is slack time in project management?
Slack time is the amount of time a task can be delayed without affecting the project’s end date.
What is lead time in project management?
Lead time in project management is the amount of time needed before a task can be started or before a resource can be attained. For example, if it takes the accounting team two working days to release a check, then the lead time for payments would be two days.
Why has time to market become increasingly important in project management?
Time to market is the time it takes for a project to start, up until its outcome (product or service) is marketable to consumers. It has become increasingly important to project management because it can have implications on profit margins or market differentiation, which affect a project’s business impact.
Wrap-up
Time is a crucial project resource that is essential for project success. Effective project time management involves thorough project planning, accurate estimating, smart scheduling, and diligent project monitoring. Aside from maximizing resources, good time management provides the project team with enough room to do quality work and navigate challenging situations.
Through the concepts described in this article, project managers can further maximize this important resource to ensure project success.
If you’re looking for a tool that provides robust time management functions, consider Workamajig. Contact us today for more information.
Originally published July 3, 2025.