Have you heard your team talk about schedule levels? Or has it come up in conversation about your earned value management system and the effort involved in constructing a schedule?
There are five schedule levels that are common in project management, and you probably use them without being aware of the distinctions between them. However, if you’re working with schedulers and planners, it can be useful to understand this particular piece of project management jargon.
Let’s explain the five levels of scheduling in project management.
Level 1 schedule
A level 1 schedule is an executive summary of the overall schedule. It might be a plan on a page or a milestone list, and is sometimes known as the project master schedule.
This level of schedule could be based on a lot of detail, but you could receive it from the client and build the work around their expectations. In fact, you might not need to maintain a schedule at this high level at all, depending on the nature of the program.
Typically, we see these used as communication tools as they spotlight major phases, stages, steps and milestones. They are a good way of sharing the project journey with executive stakeholders and managing expectations around deliverables and timescales.
Use for: Communication, summarizing the schedule in documents where only a snapshot is required, conversations about project priority to assess the project against other projects, project assessment
Level 2 schedule
A level 2 schedule is a management summary of the next level down detail. In other words, you should have a set of level 3 plans before you can summarize them into the level 2 overview document.
It is a way of consolidating several detailed plans into one to create a summary master schedule. It’s good for seeing how different vendors’ timelines overlap and interact. It also includes the information from the level 1 plan, but in a bit more detail so you’ll get some extra steps, milestones marking deliveries or compliance points, contract signing dates and so on.
You still can’t manage the day-to-day project activity from this level of schedule, but you should be able to see the main path through the work and the critical elements that need to be in place. If the project hasn’t yet been approved, this kind of plan can help executives decide if they want to move forward with the work.
Use for: Management reporting, project management activity
Level 3 schedule
This is where it becomes clearer to see the actual work involved. The level 3 schedule is a summary of activities from the level 4 schedule – each project schedule level builds on the next. It covers the whole project and doesn’t go into the task level detail but should provide enough of a breakdown for clients to see what is happening at every step. For example, prime contractors often include this plan at the point of submitting a tender to show the work and dates for their engagement, rolling up the sub-plans for sub-contractors.
On programs where each team has their own detailed sub-plan, this document is normally maintained by the project manager.
Use for: Input to monthly reporting, tender documents, creating a schedule framework for sub-contractors, establishing the critical path, consolidating level 4 schedules for project control
Level 4 schedule
The level 4 schedule is a working document that sets out the tasks to be done. This is where the work of delivering the project really happens and it’s at this level that you can manage the day-to-day activity for individual contributors. These documents are updated frequently and used for resource allocation and progress tracking.
Each team involved in the project will have a working schedule that covers the activities required to meet the deliverables. Most project management and work package management will happen at level 4. The schedules may represent the whole project timeline or just the portion of the project where the subcontractor is active.
Use for: Daily project management, detailed task tracking
Level 5 schedule
A level 5 schedule is a detailed breakdown that is more granular than the level 4. This level of planning might be required when you have particular tasks that need planning at an hourly or daily level. For example, software cutover plans are often created on an hour-by-hour basis so the team knows exactly what actions to take for migration.
As a result, you won’t need level 5 scheduling for every activity on the plan and you might not have them at all. They tend to cover a fixed period in time relating to an event where knowing the movements of the team or other resources is essential. You don’t have to keep up that level of planning for every project.
Generally, these would be put together by subject matter experts in the field, and maintained in the team that is using them.
Use for: Managing critical or complicated events
Your ability to track, manage and control project progress is only as good as the data in your schedules. You might not need all these levels for your work, or they might exist but be maintained outside of your area. Our scheduling techniques course will help your team build and maintain the right level of compliant program schedules.