The other day one of my colleagues asked me on how to manage slips when working towards an aggressive schedule. Many a time the project deadline is imposed on the team to meet the customer commitments. So how would one go about managing the project in such a situation? In this Gyan session, I will share my perspective from my experience.
The foundations of a good project management lies in the detailed definition of the scope of the project. Defining the scope right becomes even more critical when the deadlines are imposed. Flexibility matrix between Scope, Schedule and Resources defines the project management. When schedule becomes non-negotiable, the expectation is that Scope & Resources are flexible. So one needs to negotiate how much the scope can be reduced (de-scope) and how many additional resources that can be added. Based on this flexibility, the project plan needs to be reworked. One also needs to highlight the risks in meeting the aggressive schedule. These risks needs to be clearly communicated and sensitised to the stakeholders.
Despite exploiting the flexibility matrix the risk in meeting schedule is still high (due to reduced time-frame). Some of the common causes of slip in the project are under-estimation of task effort, delays in making technical decisions at the micro-level (tasks), delays in hand-offs between functional teams, not-so-rigorous tracking and lack of internalisation of the goal by every member of the team.
For making a good estimate of the task duration, the detailed scope of the task is a must. Curb the tendency to jump to task execution. Spend quality time thinking about the complete details of the task. Factor into the scope, the specification derivation, architecture analysis, documentation, reviews, Closure of action items from the reviews etc., The effort should be put to make a plan at a day's resolution. Every engineer should know on a given day the tasks that he is going to accomplish.
The sub-module leads should work closely with the engineers on a daily basis to guide engineers to make right and timely decisions on the execution of the tasks. Many a time the engineer would like to resolve the issues on his own. This may take more time. So the engineers should be encouraged to ask for help when they are stuck on an issue beyond a day.
To mitigate the project slips, one needs to track the project rigorously .. and err in the direction of micro-management. At the functional level, the project plan should have tasks at a 2 day resolution. Tracking them twice a week will help contain the slip and/or atleast plan contingency plan early. In the last month of the project, tracking the project twice a week is recommended. I learnt from my colleague an interesting N-day rule on communication of slip that he deployed in his team. If a person assesses that his task is slipping by N days, then he needs to communicate about the slip to his team/manager N days before the milestone. This provides opportunity for timely contingency plans.
The project manager should keep tab on the hand-offs between the functional teams and should work proactively with the functional leads to honor the hand-offs religiously. If it means that the functional lead needs to prioritize the inter-functional handoff over his critical tasks, then he should do it.
As resources are critical component in the project management, the manager/leads should work with each team member and sensitize them not only on the importance of meeting the schedule but also the impact to business/team on not meeting it. Every team member should internalise this and be paranoid about the final project goal (not just their task goal).
The other critical aspect of project management in meeting aggressive schedule is Communication. Communication to both the stake holders and to the team. Stake holders don't like surprises. In the event of project delays, the stake holders would like to know as early as possible. They don't like repeated slips. So the first time you anticipate a slip, assess the slip accurately and forecast a single date that you are confident you will meet (buffer it if needed). The stake holder may not like the new forecasted date, but you will not be bothered till then. Project leader should exhibit predictability in project execution, as this forms the basis of trust with the stake holders. For high schedule-risk projects, the project leads should identify intermediate milestones that if missed would directly delay the project. The dependency of this milestone to the final project schedule should be communicated to the stake holders. In the event the intermediate milestone is missed, the risk to the project schedule should be communicated to the stake holders. This way they get early visibility on the potential slip to the project. Simultaneously the project lead should communicate to the team on the status and potential risk on missing the deadline.
Comments