Event timeline: how to plan a project timetable
Today’s topic is about how to manage your timetable and how to plan an event timeline, in terms of project management..
To plan an event timeline is the projection of your activities, when they are due, who is responsible and what is needed for their completion. When all activities are done before the final deadline, you will have achieved your ideal event. In the most basic model, when you have a schedule, you know when each task has to be accomplished.
Setting up a schedule is essential for any project for you to be more efficient in allocating your resources and you don’t rely just on your memory. In addition, planning your event timetable will help you prioritize, because during event organization, many ideas come up and it is important to put them in perspective: what should be done, what should be postponed and what will not be done at all.
Setting a timetable is a more objective way for you to be able to make these decisions, because you will be clear about the state of your event and what is still pending.
How to to plan event timeline for the first time:
There are some timetable templates for events in which you also put the task duration time, that is, if we have the end date and the duration time, now we have the start date. This is great for you to find out when you should start working.
There are tasks that take you longer, others that take less. It’s natural. When you do this basic construction, you begin to get an idea of simultaneous activities as well, their workload.
Usually, the closer to the event, the greater your workload, because there are several activities that you can only or will only want to start when your event is close and / or 100% confirmed that it will happen. This increases the stress load.
That’s why I say that setting a schedule helps you, in addition, to reduce the fatigue of your team, because it reduces the anxiety of always forgetting something. It is very common when organizing the event, that you have that feeling of missing something. Take some quality time to plan an event timeline will help you reduce that feeling.
Taking the first step:
There are several ways to plan an event timeline.If you aren’t the event manager, it is important to check with the responsible what their preferences are, in terms of how the rules they like to follow.
If you are the manager, you will want to define a task tracking method and pass it on to your team, so they know what to expect.
There are people who like the schedule to be updated in real time, others who do not mind that it is updated only before the meeting. There are people who like a lot of notes and comments, and some people who are ok only listening to your feedback. Also, there are also people who like to work with priority definitions, while others who just don’t care. Anyway… it varies a lot from manager to manager. The important thing is to be aware of that and define those terms in advance.
As you can see, there are several ways to plan an event timeline. I will explain here what is most common to see and some examples.
Timeline templates for events:
The most basic template is the task after task listing with its due date. This is the simplest model, which the vast majority of to-do lists do. If you search for “to-do list app” on Google, you will find a variety that does this.
Virtually all schedules start as a list or Excel spreadsheet. Now, we are adding columns to increase complexity, according to the type of information we need. Even Microsoft project management software looks like a spreadsheet.
As I mentioned, you can have the start date and duration, so that you will be able to build a Gantt Chart. This is a visual representation of your schedule, in which you will be able to view the sequence of activities.
Then, we can add the responsible and priority columns. This is essential when you have a team of more than two people. In reality, if you have two people, you will already want to make the responsibilities clear, but I understand that it is more common to use this when there are more members. That way, people can easily access their tasks.
Project tools, like Asana, allow you to easily access your tasks and filter through yours in a long list. Don’t forget to check my Event Toolbox course, with 8 tools exclusively for event.
How to work with priorities in your event timeline.
Priority is when you define what is important, urgent, or neither. It is important that you enter a criteria of what each degree of importance means.
For example, in a job I had, urgent meant it had to be done in the next 48 hours. Important meant it had to be done in a week. If you did all your unimportant activities and didn’t do the important ones, it raised a flag for the team.
In another work, important meant the focus of the week. It was urgent that it would be the first thing to be done after leaving the meeting and needed the resolution that week. So what was important was to walk that week, but the conclusion was not expected.
Obviously, you can have a field about the status of the task: if it is in progress, if it is pending from third parties, if it is completed, if it is inactive — or has not started yet. Anyway, you can create your terminology to determine the status of your activity. This will be important when you want to know what is currently in progress or not.
Understanding dependent tasks:
A concept that people often have difficulty with is dependent tasks, that is, activities that depend on another to be started or completed. Imagine that you have to have sponsorship sales at your event. You can only start sales if you have the list of companies to be approached, right? This is a dependency.
You can’t start selling until you have the list of companies to call. At the same time, you cannot call companies if you have not finished your proposal offer, or have the sponsorship quotas set. That is, the “Sales” task is dependent on two tasks: prospect list and ready sponsorship presentation.
Reflect about all the activities dependent on each other is an excellent way for you to have smaller tasks well sorted and defined, thus creating a better workflow as well. This is great for project management.
Many tasks and project management software, instead of placing tasks dependent on each other, create subtasks. Which is the same, in a way, for practical purposes. However, this does not prevent you from having sub-tasks and interdependent tasks in the same project, in your event timetable.
Here is what happens: remembering that task dependencies can be related to the completion or beginning of the task. For example, you can start sales without having the sponsorship presentation finished, but you obviously cannot submit the proposal without it.
Therefore, the “Sales” task has its conclusion dependent on the “making the sponsorship proposal” task, but not its beginning. But then I’m getting into a greater complexity that is not the purpose of this lesson.
Final concepts for your tasks:
Two other concepts that you might consider including are about task cost and allocated time. That is, how much the task can cost to complete and how long you actually worked on it, respectively.
Cool, now you have the most common fields. I believe that this is the basics that you need to have schedules to start and set up management structures minimally enough to manage your team.
Let’s draw the big picture here:
Reviewing some of the literature regarding event planning and management, we find several frameworks to divide the different stages and production phases of an event timetable.
The very well-known Donald Getz, professor at the University of Calgary and the editor-in-chief of Event Management an International Journal, published a book titled “Event Studies: Theory, research and policy for planned events“. The book states, “Events by definition have a beginning and an end. They are temporal phenomena, and with planned events the event program or schedule is generally planned in detail and well published in advance.”
In order to choose an event-planning model, you must define the event type that you want to plan. There are a variety of ways in which you may categorize an event. Ruth Dowson and David Bassett, in 2015, divided according to its size: local events, major events, hallmark events or mega events. I’m not gonna get into details here.
You can also categorize it by frequency, geography or sector. In an attempt to create an index, a research title “Events Design and Experience” created a typology of events: Business and Corporate events; Cause — related and fundraising events; Exhibitions, expositions and fairs; Entertainment and Leisure events; Festivals; Government and Civic events; Hallmark Events; Marketing Events; Meeting and Convention Events; Social/life-cycle events; and finally Sports events.
There is a website, called Event Management Book of Knowledge, of EMBOK, which attempts to consolidate the event industry in a series of procedures backed by research. We’re gonna discuss about them in the last lesson. They split the timeline in five phases: Initiation, Planning, Implementation, Event and Closure. During each phase the event team performances different tasks. The Event and the Closure phase may be regarded as part of the Implementation.
One of the famous frameworks, from Ian Yeoman, identifies four major stages of event development. The decision stage, the detailed planning stage, the implementation stage and the evaluation stage. This model of event planning can be adapted to fit the format of any event. These events can range from life-stage events such as weddings and graduations to life-cycle events such as funerals and birthdays.
That was a great review in literature. Now, let’s get back to our lesson.
Dividing your event timeline into phases:
With the task structure planned, you should divide your event timeline into phases. To sum it up, I like to use, for example, the most common phases: Planning, Preparation, Pre-Production, Organization and Post-production.
With these steps and what each one means for your event, your role is to sort the tasks, “categorizing” them according to the fittest phase. Planning is the stage in which you define your event’s objectives and requirements. Preparation is the moment when you list the materials and plan the event timeline.
Pre-production is everything that happens before you structure the logistics and delivery of the event. Organization is the day itself and when you are already setting up your event, venue and content. Post-production is everything that happens after your event. All of this in an overly simplified way.
Getting to know the concept of Stage-gates:
One concept that I would like to pass on to you now is that of Stage-gates. This is a technique or model in which you define checkpoints to assess the quality or effectiveness of your project’s deliverables, and whether or not you allow it to go forward.
That is, you only go from Planning to Preparation if you have met certain expectations or quality standards. Stage-gates creates a checkpoint for you to evaluate “ok, did I comply with the minimum quality and delivery in this stage so I can proceed?”.
In the guide to this technique, the author, Robert Cooper, says it needs a committee for evaluation and validation. Of course it is ideal, but perhaps the manager and the leader can be the evaluators.
The central idea here is to define, from step to step, what are the minimums. Over time, you will refine these criteria and adapt to the unique style of your company (or yours) of organizing events.
For example, you can only go from Preparing to Pre-production if you have a list of 100 companies with contact information to approach for commercial sponsorship. A list of 50 possible speakers from your city with contact info, a schedule with those responsible and deadlines for all tasks involving all the areas, the design of the graphic material done and approved, and so on. Cool?
Top tips on how to manage your Stage-gates process:
When setting this up, I suggest you start with a checklist of at least 3 to 5 bullet points. Create a document called Event Organization Manual your company and improve as you gain experience and prove it’s valid and what goes wrong.
After about three editions, you will have an incredible model to work with. You will see that the organization of your events will be much more smooth and less stressful. And you will spend more time improving the quality of your delivery.
Of course, it is worth mentioning that very different events will require a different organization manual as well. And the steps I used here are just examples, I use others myself — this is a backbone of every event. Depending on what you use as a quality measure, it can change.
For most of my events, which are content and education events, I have: Preparation, Content, Communication, Schedule, Pre-production, Organization and Post-event. Notice that I have seven stages, but this is due to the characteristics of my events and what I care about.
Biggest mistakes when working with your event timeline:
Entering now the main mistakes that people make when they plan event timeline:
- When preparing the schedule, not worrying about estimating the duration and effort of the task and not making it very clear when it is done.
- Not thinking about the sequence of dependent tasks that culminate in your event and not prioritizing them. If a task in this sequence gets delayed, your event will be postponed — or you will have to go faster with the other tasks, resulting in a lower quality.
- Underestimating time of marketing and promotion of an event that depends on the audience attendance and underestimating time to confirm speakers and content. Especially for beginners, take the time to attract an audience. In case of overestimating, you gain some time to increase the quality of your event.
- Not dedicating time to deal with suppliers, speakers and the like. It’s not just inviting and trusting them, you need to check with them often.
- Ignoring and not visiting the schedule on a recurring basis with the team. Everyone needs to know where they stand transparently.
Cool? Did it make some sense? Hope so! There was a lot, planning an event timetable is a delicate and complex part. I believe I have covered some interesting points.
There’s a lot more I can say, you can ask me in the comments. There wasn’t much room for stories today because I knew the subject was dense.
As we say in my hometown: better than that, just twice that.
In the next lesson, on how to set up a budget, we will talk about my problem with current budget models, the Budget Ladder and how to prepare your budget.
The article’s treasure:
In the end of each article, I will write a final recap for you to memorize the main takeaways.
This is what I presented in this article:
- We discovered what a timeline is in the concept of events.
- Also, there are many different ways to assemble and implement one.
- We went through the concept of stage-gates. And how this technique can help you in the short term to increase the quality of your event.
Finally, we talk about the five biggest mistakes that people make in preparing and following up on the schedule.
Always look both ways. See you in the future.
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