Collaborative Project Scheduling: Bringing Your Organization Together

Traditional operational scheduling processes and tools leave a lot of room for inefficiencies. Many schedules are managed by individuals or departments with no integration with other groups. The result is a structure filled with miscommunication, inaccurate expectations, and inefficiencies that can hinder growth and progress (and ultimately, the bottom line).

Collaborative project scheduling can remedy these issues by bringing cohesiveness and transparency to your scheduling processes. Users can see scheduled tasks at a granular level and unify their priorities and objectives for an optimal outcome. Here’s what that process looks like in action:

Breaking Down Complex Projects

Complex projects are most often the responsibility of multiple specialized disciplines. Because of this, it’s important to create and maintain a project schedule that includes all phases and how they work together toward a common goal.

To do this effectively, schedules should include sub-tasks that support larger phases of the project. It also helps you avoid scheduling phases of the project in departmental silos that are hidden from other members of the project.

Collaborative scheduling also helps you define the relationship between the phases of the project. Doing so helps you to answer important questions, such as:

• What determines when phases can occur
• Do phases have to be completed in a specific order?
• Are there key dates for some phases that must be considered?

These answers can help you use the data you have to make informed decisions that can produce an optimal outcome for all parties involved.

Improving Team Communication Through Transparency

Tasks and decisions that come from the top down or are centrally managed are not always reliable. In some cases, critical scheduling information is not elevated or visible, while a lack of buy-in or accountability can impact the integrity of the information being passed down.

When this happens, an unreliable schedule encourages people to look elsewhere for the “real” story.

In collaborative project scheduling, team members responsible for executing the project have the best information about project timing. This gives teams the power to create and maintain project schedules on the front line, which promotes engagement and accountability. Team members have an accurate picture of the entire lifecycle of a project and can better communicate on objectives and deliverables.

How ForeSource Provides Organizational Benefits through Collaborative Scheduling

ForeSource designed advanced phase-based scheduling tools with the principles of collaboration and transparency in mind. Our solution emphasizes clear relationships between the various phases of a project and highlights the interactions between disciplines.

In doing so, ForeSource encourages active engagement in the project schedule to maintain focus on project delivery. As a result, team members have a holistic view of every project and a greater understanding of the role they play so they can make better-informed decisions moving forward.

The benefits extend from the executive level to asset teams, operational teams, and administrative teams to break down communication silos that could be stifling production. To see ForeSource in action, reach out today to schedule a free demo.