What is a workback schedule?

A workback schedule is a tool that teams use to plan a project’s life cycle from the start date to delivery. To create workback schedules, professionals typically reverse engineer a project’s schedule in order to find all the milestones needed before delivery. Many teams use a workback schedule to date close deadlines, work towards eventual ones and set expectations for the project as it progresses.

Why is a workback schedule important?

Workback schedules are important because they emphasize a project’s timeline and deadlines. If your team has an important project with strict deadlines, then a workback schedule may be effective. Workback schedules help your team determine if a given deadline is reasonable for your schedule or not. If you’re working on multiple projects at once, or are under too strict of time constraints to get the work done, then a workback schedule may give you the opportunity to make the schedule more favorable. Additionally, your team can use a workback schedule to illustrate challenging deadlines to clients, stakeholders or other teams.If your schedule has unmovable deadlines that are challenging for your team, a workback schedule can help you prepare in advance to work towards that deadline. For example, you may be able to simultaneously work toward two deadlines that you may not have otherwise had enough time to meet if your team were to work linearly. Teams can use additional resources to streamline production, or coordinate plans to adjust for extra or divided work.

How to create a workback schedule

If you want to create a workback schedule for your team project, consider the following steps:

1. Organize your deadlines

In order to create a workback schedule, first gather any deliverables, goals and due dates assigned to your team and arrange them in order. Together with your team, try to estimate how long meeting each deadline may take. Your team may need to communicate with clients, other teams or anyone related to your project in order to determine delivery dates. If possible, try to coordinate delivery dates to the same workday every week in order to encourage a regular work schedule.

2. Create rows and columns

You can create a basic workback schedule template on spreadsheet software. First, create columns with the following details from left to right:

• Order number: Your order number could be a specific code that you’ve assigned to your deliverable. Additionally, an order number could also reflect this task’s place in your objective list.
• Quantity: This next column displays how many of each deliverable, or task you plan on delivering in the time remaining. This column helps primarily for deliverables, keeping the number needed by a certain date on track.
• Task name: Your task name column can help keep tasks organized by labeling them in familiar terms. Consider using universally familiar terms for your work, something that your team, clients and stakeholders can all understand.
• Current status: Your current status column is used to keep track of how a step in the project is going. You can fill it with what your team is waiting on, who is working on it or any other indicators that you think may be helpful for communicating the task status to project members.
• Responsibility: Your team can use the responsibility column for indicating who handles the task. They can assign one or multiple names to the project and update it as needed in order to keep project data current.
• Summary: Summarizing your workback schedule tasks can keep communications current with your entire team and help set expectations for the project during its progress. For example, if you need to cancel a scheduled task for any reason, combining two tasks may be an option. Noting this combination in your summary section can update expectations and keep the entire team informed.
• Time Remaining: Your time remaining cell shows how much time a team has before a project reaches its deadline. Keeping this section updated can be very helpful for communicating information to a large team.

This outline can create the layout for listing your tasks and many major details concerning them. As you include more information in your workback schedule, you may need to remind your team less during meetings and progress checks.

3. Enter your project data

After creating your columns, create rows for each deliverable, task and objective in order. Your team can do this either from the last task to the first or chronologically. It may be faster to create your workback schedule from beginning to end rather than in reverse, simply because other members of your team may have more information on tasks that are closer to their schedules. However, try to make as much progress towards the end of your project as possible so you can better prepare for later deadlines.

4. Consider color-coding

An interesting way to both help teams understand your workback schedule and keep items organized is to establish a color code. You can create a color code for a specific team member, assigning that color to the deliverables they handle. You can use your color code for your time remaining cells, changing the color from green to yellow to red as the delivery date becomes closer. Your team also could use color-coding to assign tasks into self-directed categories, such as tasks that have to do with a certain department, or tasks that require a meeting.

5. Take holidays into account

When creating your schedules, consider including any holidays that might affect the team’s progress. This includes holidays your company recognizes, days your employees may ask for vacation or any holidays that your clients, stakeholders or coworkers may celebrate in their countries that you do not celebrate in your own. Taking consideration of other stakeholders’ holidays can help strengthen your team’s performance, showing your coworkers that you’re both considerate and a thoughtful planner.

6. Double-check your work with the team

After constructing your schedule with the team, consider checking to make sure that all the information you’ve entered is correct. By working with verified dates, double-checking your information can help your progress towards later project deadlines go smoothly. Once you’ve received approval from all your members concerning deadlines and deliverables, you’re ready to progress.