Step 4: Create the Schedule and the Budget

With scope and risks in hand, the two questions every sponsor asks arrive: when will it be ready? and how much will it cost? A reliable answer does not come from a hunch — it comes from the deliverables you have already defined.

You can build and control the schedule in whichever tool fits your context. In this course we use ProjectAdm, but the same concepts hold for MS Project, ClickUp or Trello. What matters is not the tool — it is keeping the schedule, the baseline and the follow-up up to date.

From the WBS to the schedule and the budget

For each element of the WBS you detail the activities and the resources needed — and that produces the schedule and the budget. The PMBOK processes involved:

• Define the activities specific to each deliverable;
• Sequence the activities (identify dependencies);
• Estimate resources and durations for each activity;
• Estimate the costs and determine the budget — which forms the cost baseline.

A few key concepts: an activity is a distinct, scheduled portion of work; duration is the number of work periods needed to complete it (do not confuse it with elapsed time); an estimate is the probable quantitative assessment. Estimating bottom-up, from the WBS, is what gives you forecasts you — and your client — can trust. When you use management software, these steps are sped up and consolidated automatically.

On your board (ProjectAdm)

For each deliverable in the WBS list, list the activities in the card’s checklist and set the start and finish dates. View the schedule in the Gantt and Calendar views. In the Budget [HOW MUCH] list, record the estimated cost of each phase or deliverable (one card per item).

Predictive × Agile

In the Predictive approach, you build a detailed schedule with dates and a cost baseline.

In the Agile approach, you plan in waves: at Release Planning you spread the backlog across Sprints, forming a roadmap; at the start of each Sprint, Sprint Planning sets the goal and which stories fit, according to the team’s capacity and velocity (how many story points it usually completes per Sprint). The roadmap is alive — it is replanned every Sprint, with the learning accumulated so far.

🎯 Your turn — Create the schedule and the budget

🎯 Objective: define the activities of each deliverable, when they will be done and how much they will cost.

✅ Before you start: scope (WBS) and risks ready (Steps 2 and 3).

🗃️ On your board: work on the deliverables of the WBS list and on the Budget [HOW MUCH] list.

📋 Checklist:

1. For each deliverable, list the activities in the card’s checklist.
2. Set the start and finish dates and the estimated duration of each deliverable.
3. View the schedule in the Gantt or Calendar view.
4. Record the estimated cost of each phase/deliverable in the Budget list.

🎁 Your deliverable: the schedule (dates visible on the Gantt) and the budget.  ⏱️ Time: at least 2 hours (it may take more than one meeting).  🛠️ Tools: ProjectAdm (Gantt and Calendar) + decomposition.

💡 Accelerate with AI: run Step 4 in the course menu. It reads your WBS and hands you the prompt for this step already filled in with your deliverables — it asks the AI for the activities, the estimated duration, the dates and the cost of each item. Paste the answer into the “0. Inbox” card and run Step 4 again: the dates land on the WBS cards and the costs become cards in the Budget list.

💬 Tip: estimate per deliverable, not per day. At the start, approximate dates are enough — refine them as the project goes.

🎁 Your artifact — the schedule, generated from your board

When you finish Step 4, Project Together reads the dates and durations on your board and generates your schedule into _saida/documentos/ — including a native MS Project file, so you can open the same schedule in the tool your organization already uses. You copy nothing: the board is the source.

With the plan built, it is time to review it and approve it: Step 5.