Remember to include vacations of team members when creating a timeline. It will depend on the project’s size and nature, but it is important to consider vacation schedules and availability sooner than later. It’s important to have this information in advance of any large, business-critical projects. This will allow you to clearly define the timeframe and guidelines for asking for time off. All team members should have vacation plans. They should also be aware of the risks involved and how to mitigate them.
If you plan any contingency periods in your schedule, it will leave the time available for really unexpected events or delays rather than being used to make up for vacations. Even if the exact vacation schedule of team members is not known, it is a good idea to include a placeholder for vacation time in your schedule. It is very likely that people will use the vacation time allowed by the company. We know that not everyone takes vacation at the same times so the project plan should be updated in real-time when people go on vacation so that they are not on a critical path during that time.
How do you plan? How do you schedule? Do you estimate the effort required to complete a task and then schedule the time it will take? Do you link your durations to the amount you have? If you add or lose resources, the task’s duration will change. How do you estimate? Do you use 3-point method? (Optimistic, Pessimistic, and likely figures to calculate an estimation? You will experience an increase in time if you don’t have other resources. Risk management is also important. If you identify a risk (that key resource will not be available to complete tasks within the scheduled time), then you can plan mitigation actions. Get more resources on board, allow for a delay, and re-schedule activities when you have the opportunity. This will increase your chances of success.
To reduce your risk, you need to calculate all vacations
Resource adjustment: If the team member is assigned to tasks on a critical path, you don’t want your project to slip on that.
Budget: Without the vacation information, it is impossible to calculate a more precise budget.
Communication: If you know when a resource will be taking vacation, you can communicate that information to other stakeholders. This will avoid any surprises.
Risk management
Project management software will be a great help. MS Project, a program similar to MS Project, allows you to add resources with days off, schedules, hours, vacation/holiday times, and you can always modify it. You can view histograms when you assign resources to activities. These histograms will help you to allocate your resources and adjust your schedule if necessary.
Always create an unconstrained project plan first, taking into account work process dependencies. Next, use role-based dependencies, planned downtime, utilization rates, or structural lost time. Finally, you can use resource level dependency. This probabilistic analysis considers how obstacles such as these can affect the critical path. It takes into account trade-offs between cost and time. This is where you begin to calculate your resources. You estimate the time they work, and then you add their vacations, days off, and other variables. You can use various estimation techniques to estimate the duration of activities, as well as costs and calendars. Next, create your schedule.