Tools & Techniques:
This Month's Tool: Project Calendar
Tool Purpose:
The purpose of the project calendar is to display the major project events on a formatted document, which displays calendar days to allow for easy understanding of important and critical project dates. The project calendar is not a personal calendar. It is quite different. Project Calendars should store only project information, such as milestone dates, meeting events, current activities, and so on. The only personal information stored on a project calendar would be vacations or known personal events that would have an effect on the project, but would contain all the team members, not just a single team member as a personal calendar would.
Applicable PMI Knowledge area/Process: Communication
Tool Description:
The project calendar is a helpful tool for any project manager, team member, or stakeholder trying to understand the major milestones of the project. The project calendar in an instant can provide high-level milestone dates to anyone asking and if used correctly it will track the high-level status of the project as well. As the project manager monitors and controls the execution of the project, he should ensure the keeping of the project calendar is up-to-date for tracking status. As major milestones are completed, the project manager marks off the milestones as complete on the calendar and communicates that information to any interested stakeholders.