Step 14: Communicating the Schedule
A Planner should spend more time communicating than planning and scheduling. A schedule should never be a 'black box' that few people can read or interpret — always keep your audience in mind and make it as self-explanatory as possible.
Step 1 — Who Is Your Audience?
The message that needs to be communicated may differ depending on the audience:
- Project Teams & working groups — engage to get everyone coordinated (who does what, are we on time?)
- Directors — engage to report schedule status and achievability, make decisions, escalate, get team buy-in, accountability and ownership
- CEO / Government / Minister — engage for escalation and approval of major changes
- Contract Teams — engage to understand project status and resolve schedule achievability issues
Step 2 — What Messages Are You Communicating?
Messages that planners typically need to communicate include: schedule achievability, delivery strategy, durations and dates, critical and near-critical paths, compliance with contract documents, strengths and weaknesses, risks and opportunities, changes and delays (including reasons and mitigation), progress, resource requirements, constraints and issues, and items for escalation.
Step 3 — How Do You Communicate Effectively?
Large and complex projects suffer from data and information overload. The most successful communication approaches convert complexity into a format that is simple to understand.
Be creative and always consider your audience. The aim is that the audience can understand your communication tool without needing you to explain it.
Visual Planning Tools
Use planning tools, visual diagrams, and trackers to supplement the detailed schedule. These help communicate site constraints, interfaces, high-level timing, staging, and sequencing:
- Key milestone trackers
- Summary schedules
- Time Chainage Diagrams (Tilos / ChainLink / TurboChart)
- Progress histograms and S-curves
- Stage/Phase diagrams
- Performance Metrics / KPIs
- Heat Maps
- Visual Dashboards (Excel, Power BI, Visio)
Communication Is a Conversation
Communication of schedule status goes beyond issuing schedules and reports. More than 90% of communication is conveyed through body language and voice tone — email alone is not enough. Face-to-face discussions are essential when:
- Developing a schedule for the first time
- Reviewing a baseline schedule with the team
- Undertaking progress updates with individual activity owners
- Reviewing schedule status, changes, and delays with the project team
- Advising on achievability when reviewing schedules prepared by others
Be transparent and open about schedule delays, issues, and risks. False optimism will not solve problems. If the schedule is forecasting a delay: quantify it, identify the activities causing it, identify root causes, identify specific mitigation actions — with owners and deadlines — and follow up until complete.
Good Information
The schedule is a virtual simulation of how a project will be delivered. For it to be a good predictor of future outcomes, information inputs must be:
To get good information, a Planner must engage closely with experts and activity owners — find out who does what, what they know, their background and experience, which activities they own, and what else they can advise on. Ask lots of questions, be patient, and engage with an open mind.
Planners should also develop their own subject matter expertise — reviewing drawings, construction methods, spending time on site, and building a clear mental picture of the project. Frequent site visits bring familiarity, and familiarity brings better understanding.
Follow the rule of
ABC
nothing
no one
the facts
🎉 Module 1 Complete!
You've completed all 15 steps of Module 1: Planning a Project. Continue to Module 2 to master the Critical Path Method in depth.
Go to Module 2: Critical Path Explained →Knowledge Check — Communicating the Schedule
Test your understanding of this lesson. Select the best answer for each question.
1. The primary purpose of communicating project schedule information is:
2. When communicating schedule updates, it's important to:
3. Effective communication of schedule information should consider:
4. Progress updates on the project schedule should be:
5. The best approach to address potential schedule risks during communication is to:
Discussion Questions
Q6. Explain two benefits of effectively communicating project schedule information to team members.
Q7. Describe two different methods (beyond email) that can be used to communicate project schedules and progress updates.
Q8. A critical bug is causing a delay on one of the key activities in a software development project. How would you communicate this to your development team? What specific details would you include?
Write your answers in the Course Workbook and discuss with your team or mentor.