Project time management helps you to create more accurate project scheduling and prioritizing of work, giving you better control over scope, progress, and budget. That way, you can see at a glance what everyone is working on, make sure that no one is overloaded, and notice when there’s room for new projects. Project time management best practices Estimate project time accurately Bottom-Up Estimates: The team members who will actually perform the work help make these estimates.

Add up to less than 24 hours: When you need to know how many hours and minutes it’ll take to complete two simple tasks Projects meet their deadlines because they’re not only well-planned down to every detail and resource, but they’re realistic. This means the schedule makes room for uncertainty and unexpected surprises. Team members are assigned to work based on their availability; the right software is used to provide an accurate and updated insight into the plan, and it’s easy to identify which tasks are on schedule and which ones are running late. That’s why monitoring your team’s workload is crucial in keeping a healthy and productive work environment.Because Excel times are numbers, you can add and subtract them. And the difference between a start time and an end time is called “time difference” or “elapsed time.” plan details—estimates, assigned resources—and delivers an expected delivery date all the way up to the project level. And every time a change is made, the scheduler automatically recalculates the plan and gives you the latest statistical likelihood of achieving your given finish dates. Cons: Hourly employees might not be allowed to work overtime in several companies. And if the business is slow, hourly workers might not be allowed to work the traditional 40 hours weekly and can be dismissed early. They might not get insurance plans, retirement plans, and bonuses, which companies often provide to their salaried employees.

To convert the number of minutes to a decimal number, you divide the number of minutes by 60. So if the number of minutes was 15, the decimal equivalent would be 0.25 (15 ÷ 60 = 0.25). Expert Judgement: You rely on known criteria and expertise from within your organization or from the field to determine the necessary activities to complete your project. Some reference documents for this stage are the project charter, project scope statement, or the requirement list. You can even refer to the network diagram (pictorial representation of the project’s complete workflow).

Ultimately, the project schedule is the biggest predictor of how long your project will take to complete. And any delays you encounter are compared against the project scope baseline and the schedule baseline and shown to your stakeholders. Excelling at project time management requires developing key skills like planning, estimation, and scheduling. There isn’t a single formula or format for calculating time in Excel. It depends on your dataset and the goal you want to achieve. Most use a custom format (number over text function) to understand time and date values, or the time difference value.