#4 Watch the clock
“Time keeps on ticking, ticking, ticking …..right into the future”. Never were truer words spoken about life and project management. That clock just keeps on running and it’s your job to make sure it does not run out of sand before the project is done.
Why
Time management is one of the simple rules for project management. Someone wants and expects the job to be done in a certain timeframe. Once late, you have missed the mark. Time is one variable that isn’t going to change unless your project scope or deadlines are moved with full knowledge and permission. For most being late is what it is- Late. No amount of excuses or reasons can alter the fact. Once the project is late, it’s late. Just a matter of how late it has become. No prizes for giving that news to your project sponsor or owner.
Surefire practice
- Worry about, and manage your deadlines. It is not enough to just manage your deadlines, good project managers worry about missing them. Project management, just as any other set of skills, is enhanced when we take the performance of these duties personally. Individuals, who don’t worry about being on time for meetings or making arrangements and continually change them, make poor project managers. Not because they could not change their behavior, but they don’t worry enough about the impact of their untimely results.
- Parallel activities. Once time starts to become a problem in the project, immediately consider actions to change the course so that deadlines or budgets are not affected aversely. One excellent method to deal with this is to start activities on a parallel track. This can help to accelerate other parts of the project to make up for the time lags that have already occurred.
- Move resources. Another means to deal with time and deadline problems is to move resources and staff from one part of the project to another. In the most severe of cases this might mean increasing budgets or altering the scope of goals or objectives. Depending on the value of time to this project this still might be worth considering.
Excerpted from Michael J. Cunningham’s Finish What You Start
