What is project time management? Importance, process, and strategies

Introduction

You know the White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland appears to be late for his job with the duchess. If he had exercised effective time management he would have never been late all the time. This is just an instance of the importance of managing time.

For managers, teams, and everyone, project time management is one of the important factors of project management commitment.

“Time is money”, “Time is of the essence”, and many more such phrases clearly show the importance of controlling the time aspect of a project. Keeping all this in mind, let’s first learn what project time management is.

What is project time management?

Project time management is the skill of analyzing the timeline of the project and ensuring that the project is completed within the time, scope, and budget. It is not just about tracking the hours spent, it is about strategically planning, monitoring, and controlling the overall direction of the project.

What are the main project time management processes?

Six steps are involved in project time management:

1. Activity Definition: The project team should identify and schedule different activities and tasks to be done during the project life cycle. These are the things that are required for timely project deliverables.
2. Activity Sequencing: In this step, project managers need to introduce documents and map task dependencies. It defines the order in which deliverables must be completed.
3. Estimating Resources: Identifying and defining the resources including people, materials, and machines required to complete a deliverable.
4. Activity Duration Estimating: Estimating the timeline using formulas such as PERT(Program Evaluation Review Technique) to develop an exact schedule for the completion of durables.
5. Project Schedule Development: Plotting the start and end dates for each activity as well as the analysis of the order of activities, timelines, resources, and schedule barriers to having an accurate schedule.
6. Schedule Controlling and Monitoring: Regularly monitor the progress of the project and review progress so that it is manageable when there is a need to change the product schedule.

Why project time management is important?

Every project needs a schedule to meet its end date. A team and the project manager have to manage their own time to meet the schedule. If you don’t create a project schedule or do not plan the end date, there are chances that years will go by and your project will never get finished.

For project managers, it is important to possess time management skills to be successful. A lack of effective time management will affect the project in the long run. Here are a few reasons why time management is important in project management:

1. Meeting Deadlines: Effective time management is important to ensure that the project is completed within the scheduled time frame.
2. Resource Optimization: Proper time management helps in the efficient allocation and utilization of project resources. By allocating appropriate time to tasks, and managing the time of team members, project managers can use resources efficiently.
3. Cost Control: Effective time management helps in keeping the project on schedule, which can directly affect the delivery date and cost of the project.
4. Risk Management: By allocating appropriate time for project assessment, project managers can ensure that the project risks are timely identified and mitigated, reducing the impact of potential issues.
5. Improved Productivity: Efficient time management increases the productivity of the project team. By allocating a sufficient amount of time to tasks, setting priorities, and establishing clear timelines, team members can work more efficiently and effectively.
6. Better Decision Making: With a clear understanding of the project timeline, project managers can make informed decisions regarding task prioritization, resource allocation, and potential adjustments to the project plan.
7. Stakeholder Satisfaction: Meeting project deadlines and delivering results on time enhances the reputation of the project team and builds trust with stakeholders.

Best strategies for project time management

1. Use the right tools and equipment

What is the first step in project time management? If you are not aware of it, it is using the right tools and equipment. There are many project management tools for vast, varied needs and they serve many different functions. In project management, a project manager will have to use tools to manage time effectively on projects. 

If the right tools and equipment are not available, even the most talented project manager will not be able to meet deadlines. Some areas to look after are our communication, project planning software, time tracking software, time management tools, and collaboration software.

ProofHub

ProofHub is a versatile project collaboration and time management system with built-in time-tracking software to bring all your time-related data in one place. Its time tracking feature is designed to help team managers find out how much “actual” time is spent on performing tasks and eliminate time wastage from the process.

Let’s take a look at the useful features of ProofHub’s time-tracking software system:

• Add timesheets – ProofHub timesheets help team managers track their team’s performance by maintaining a record of all the time entries they have devoted to performing their tasks.
  You can use these timesheets for payroll, client billing, estimation, tracking, and time management. Users can also export these timesheets for invoicing and billing purposes. 
• Time reports – Team managers can create custom time reports of people and projects to get a clear idea of where the time goes.
• Set time estimates – Managers can set time estimates for tasks to define the “expected” time it should take to get them done. Get notified immediately if the time taken exceeds the actual time set, making the most of ProofHub’s time management tool.
• Comprehensive view of all time data – You can have a bird’s eye view of all time data of all team members stored in one place, across all projects, billable or non-billable, without the need to jump through projects. 
• Track time manually or using timers – You can track time either manually or using timers. Manual time entries can be used to record the number of hours it took to get work done and track time spent for billable or non-billable hours.

Apart from time tracking software, it also has a range of other useful features – Proofing, White-Labeling, Tasks, Kanban Boards, Gantt Charts, Reports, Chat, and Calendars to help teams achieve more in less time.

Toggl

Toggl is a no-hassle time-tracking software that is the perfect add-on to your existing tools to help you be more productive throughout the day. Yet, its features are quite limited. Toggl may not reach your and your team’s expectations, especially if you want detailed project time tracking. The tool is usually praised for its simplicity.

Hubstaff

Hubstaff is another popular time management app that offers the feature of project time management. The software tracks the time spent on work as well as your team’s leisure time in the form of activity reports. It has a flexible calendar view to see different time entries – daily, weekly, or monthly. That’s a great feature for analyzing your team’s performance and managing projects all the time.

If you’re constantly juggling with deadlines and deliverables, then it is sure that you would benefit from dedicated time management software.

2. Know how you spend your time

Keep a time log to find how you are using your time. Time is the most valuable asset. If you’re overlooking your routine, it can lead to a loss in productivity. Record what you are doing for 15-minute intervals for some time. When you are mindful of what task is taking your time and what you are spending your time on, you can better manage it.  

“How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.” ~Annie Dillard

Find your most time-consuming tasks and see if you are investing your time in the most important activities. When everyone has the same number of hours in the day, why do some seem to get so much more done? Because they have a good sense of where they spend their time on routine tasks and estimate how much time is available for the rest of the activities. 

3. Set priorities

Setting priorities to manage your time effectively requires a difference between what is important and what is urgent. When the goals are set and you’ve determined the individual tasks that you need to do, it’s time to prioritize. Prioritizing is a way to get things done if it is done in the right way. 

For example, look at your daily tasks and prioritize them according to:

• Important and urgent: Do these tasks right away.
• Important but not urgent: Decide when to do these tasks.
• Urgent but not important: Delegate these tasks if possible.
• Not urgent and not important: Set these aside to do later.

Focusing on your tasks according to the above format you can have greater control over your time and time management will always be by your side. Also, one of the easiest ways to prioritize is to make a “to-do” list on project management software. When you’re making the list, be careful it doesn’t get out of control. Rank the items in order of priority to have a sense of accomplishment as you move down the list.

4. Organize your task list

Task Lists are a compound of all the project responsibilities for teams and the project manager. A powerful thing that we can do to better manage time is to organize it. Sure, organizing your task list is a great thing and there are several different ways you can do it.

Organize tasks by due date

This is one important thing that managers and employees choose to do when organizing tasks over task management software. Some due dates need to be hit and it should be done for time management. You’ll be motivated to accomplish the task when you’ve got a due date.

Simply add start and due dates to each task or sub-tasks in your task list and sort them out by the due date. This will give you an idea of what needs to be done today and what is to be done in the coming days.

Pro Tip: Using ProofHub you can set the due date to make a task recurring, set recurrence, see overdue tasks on your list, and change the dates in case of unforeseen requirements.

Organize tasks by progress (with Kanban)

Every task includes sub-tasks that help you move through your goals smoothly. Having to manage these tasks and sub-tasks on Kanban is a great method to manage your time as you organize your work by progress. Simply make a to-do list on the Kanban board.

Kanban board lets you organize and manage your process by visualizing every step of your workflow. When you move your tasks through stages as it progresses, you can complete projects efficiently.

5. Avoid over-commitment 

This one can be tricky because most of the time project managers and teams doubt if they are working on the right initiative that requires minimizing interruptions. Over-commitment or commitment fallacy is a fear in the modern workplace as it can lead to failing projects. And sometimes we refuse to move away from a project because we’ve already put a lot of work into it.

Even when it is a better option to work on something else. But if you have to improve your time management skills, it becomes important to know what should you be working on that will bring the utmost impact. This way you can quickly move from project to project without wasting time and avoid wasteful work.

Use the 80/20 rule

Also known as the Pareto principle, the 80/20 rule is one of the helpful concepts of time management. It states that approximately 80% of your results will come from 20% of the work that you do. This principle is important to learn and understand to optimize your workday and to learn how to prioritize your tasks, days, weeks, and months.

Conclusion

Much like money, time is both valuable and limited. People who practice good time management techniques;

• Are more productive
• Have more energy
• Feel less stressed
• Get more things done
• Feel great about themselves

Therefore, it is a good idea to find a time management strategy that works best for you. There you go. Good luck!

FAQs

Also read:

• Project risk management: 6-step strategy for sure-shot success
• Guide to project resource management: Processes, challenges & tools
• How to give effective project feedback
• Master stakeholder management: Your guide to project success