How to get more projects done on time.
You may have noticed this before, but in case you haven’t, many many many projects are not completed on their due date.
I know this is shocking, and if you are a new project manager, you may want to leave the blog now. Continuing to read this article may result in the following.
- Better understanding of the factors that should go into a project plan time-line.
- More effective communication with the key players in your project.
- Increased ability to accurately predict the completion time of a project.
If this frightens you…
Well at least you have been warned.
Rule One: The slowest horse determines the speed of the wagon.
Some people will be able to get their jobs done faster than others. Some times this is predictable, and a consistent level of performance. Some times people are just lucky. But just because you have one race horse does not mean that the wagon will speed up.
First of all, that workaholic may begin to burn out if they are constantly pulling other peoples weight. Don’t let them take on too much of the tasks.
Secondly, you need to give everyone else a chance to get that experience.
So pace the project with a base-line of performance. Then whey you get done a little early, you can all look heroic.
Rule Two: Determining the time of the project by analyzing the time of the tasks.
Yes this sounds simple. And you may have been given a deadline from above. But that does not mean that you should not start with the incremental tasks.
- Call a meeting, and have everyone report on how long their part will take.
- plug it all into a project plan, and see how much past your deadline it puts you.
- After that, open the discussion on how to get all the work done by the project deadline.
- If there is no way, then push back on those giving the deadline.
- But if it is possible, you are better off if the team figures out where to put the extra muscle to push the task along.
Rule Three: Pad for the unforeseeable.
If you know that you need to pad a time estimate because experience tells you that it takes longer than the sum of the discrete tasks, then by all means pad the estimate. But don’t hide that from your team, or if you are not the project leader, then don’t hide that from you project leader.
The need to pad times is just a reality. People get interrupted both by life, and work. There is nothing wrong with saying, “Well it takes 10 minutes to setup one customer, so lets say that we can get 4 done an hour.” Then if you can beat that time you are ahead.
Rule Four: Make sure you have regular checkpoints
If you are on a project that takes a week, you need to be checking in with the players, and the team as a whole more than just at the kick-off and wrap-up meetings. Sometimes you need to have a daily meeting. (sometimes more than that.) But leaving even the best professionals off by themselves will always mean that you are blindsided when the deadline is missed.
Checking in won’t mean that things won’t take longer than they were planned, but they will allow you to know about them, and possibly compensate for one or more unforeseen delays.
Rule Five: Participate in open discussions about the time-line.
From the very beginning, the project time-line should be published and discussed in every meeting about the project. Sometimes having a conference room or some location where the time-line and project status can be posted will serve as a banner to let everyone know where the team stands.
When problems come up, have a quick brains storming session about how to correct the course and get the project back on the time-line.
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