By Louise Worsley

Time-constrained projects arise from four external drivers.

• Window-of-opportunity—the value of completing the project is severely compromised if delivery is late, for example producing a game for the Christmas market
• Compliance—meeting a legislated delivery date, for instancebecoming compliant with new privacy laws for personal data
• End-of-life—increased risk of unprotected catastrophic failure caused by using systems and products after their predicted shelf-life, for example using obsolete switching gear
• Public commitments—exposing the organization to public ridicule or genuine reputational risk, for example, the opening event of the Olympic Games

Sponsor View

In each of these cases, the significance of meeting the end-date varies depending upon the sponsor’s view of the risk exposure, or loss of benefit, they are prepared to countenance. Missing a legislative compliance date may result in a fine, but the sponsor may decide that this is preferable to the additional costs associated with speeding up the delivery of the project. In a time-constrained project, the project manager must understand the sponsor’s position about the date.

Timeboxing

There is a fifth cause of time-constrained projects. It’s called timeboxing.

Notice the often-useful management effects of rigidly maintained time constraints on projects where some software development methodologies—in the old days DSDM and RAD—and now, Agile approaches – deliberately adopt the imposition of rigid time constraints on the product development process.

In the right circumstances and for the right products, a time-boxed approach works. Its value arises from the impact on what management is obliged to implement to meet its obligations driven by the temporal constraint. Done well, and using the time constraint as a driver for innovation in tasking and resourcing, it is a powerful productivity tool.

Implemented poorly, the time constraint becomes an excuse for de-scoping with disappointing results. There are many circumstances where the imposition of an unnecessary time-constraint leads to trouble, including situations where incurring the associated technical debt is unacceptable. Whatever else it may be, timeboxing is not a panacea for every project.

Is your project really time-constrained?

The truth is that less than 20 percent of projects are genuinely end-date driven. Project end-dates are often not deadlines but more like these:

• Estimated dates: baseline finish dates that have been calculated based on a task-sequencing tool. These vary over the life of the project as the level of certainty around what is to be delivered and how long the tasks will take, fluctuates.
• Target dates: a date agreed with the sponsor as a target, but with the understanding that it can be renegotiated should it become necessary to do so. Targets are not constraints—–unless, of course, the sponsor makes them so.

And this is important! The target date may be regarded as a deadline, but it is not treated as a drop-dead end-date. It is not the primary driver for the project.

Strategies for Planning Time-Bound Projects

Where an end-date must be met, the planning process changes. For a start, planning under time constraints always demands more effort in planning, not less. It is essential, therefore, that the project manager engages with the stakeholders so that they become aware of this and in so doing resists the just “get on with it” pressure so often applied by them.

If “time is of the essence” for your project; if you need to bring in your project in tight time-scales, then here are just some of the actions you could and should be considering:

Strategy

“Crash” the schedule by adding resources. Remember, more resources and more tasks mean greater monitoring.

Identify elapsed time delays, those activities which are not compressible using existing processes.

Identify delays which may be introduced because of decision-making processes.

Fast-track the schedule—look for ways of breaking dependencies between activities. Remember, parallel tasks increase resources and risks, so increase monitoring.

Identify resource skills gaps up front

Communicate and re-communicate the purpose, objective, CSFs, and value of the project throughout the project’s lifecycle

Identify foreseeable problems (risks)

Be prepared for unforeseen problems

Tactics

Working with larger numbers of resources influences the way work is structured, scheduled, and communicated. Remember the bigger the team resources; the less productive each member will be.

Develop new processes, which allow products to be delivered faster. Remember new procedures will create new types of errors, and you won’t have prepared ways to correct them. So test and monitor more.

Ensure clarity on who makes what decisions and stick to it. Factor in decision-making; bring governance closer to the project. Delayed issue resolution can kill your project.

Evaluate and manage the additional risks associated with changing the standard dependency structures. Identify management actions; include in plans. Remember to investigate Start-to-Start with lag times sequencing rather the Finish-to-Start serial sequencing.

Whenever a task demands effort from a specific resource, try to eliminate it—it is a significant risk on time-constrained projects. If not possible, make the attaining and managing of that person as a CSF for the project.

Find ways in meetings and one-on-ones to rehearse the mission of the project with every project member —and in the steering group—and keep checking back with the sponsor that nothing has changed.

Log each risk statement with at least one management action associated with it. Most “fix-on-failure” solutions will cost more in time and money than the other four risk strategies. In time-constrained projects, making good is the least favoured option.

Schedule milestones, even inch pebbles. Only schedule at the level of detail that reflects your level of uncertainty. The less you know, the greater the detail! Remember schedules are the most volatile project document. Expect to change it frequently to account for the unplanned circumstances.

Time-constrained Projects are less complex

Time-constrained projects can be tough on teams; they may involve hard work and lots of overtime. However, our research suggests that managerially, they are often less complex. With an understood, agreed and, most importantly, an immovable constraint—a genuine drop-dead deadline end-date—the compromises that have to be made are clear-cut. Either you meet the end-date—or you fail. It is much easier to manage when the conditions of success are clear!  

Adaptive Planning Techniques

In our research into what makes project managers successful, planning, along with monitoring and control, are the two areas where high-performance project managers spend most of their time. What is also clear from the findings is that the most distinctive characteristic is their ability to use their experience and know-how to adapt their planning approach to meet the specific challenges of the project they were managing.

There is no single approach to planning a project, but neither is project planning a free-for-all. One consistent finding is that the context – the environment within which planning takes place – determines the following:

• approach that is most appropriate to use
• which techniques and tools are most suitable and
• what factors to consider. 

The project-planning environment is itself a product of the set of constraints that bound the project, and these constraints involve much more than time, cost and quality. To plan effectively and appropriately project managers must take into account both the source of the constraint and their relative significance or priority – the hierarchy of constraints.

About the Author:

Louise Worsley, with her husband, Christopher Worsley, are the authors of Adaptive Project Planning, published in February 2019.  This book prepares you for many of the common project planning situations you will meet. It addresses how planning and planning decisions alter, depending on the constraint hierarchy: how resource-constrained planning differs from end-date schedule planning, what is different between cost-constrained plans and time-boxing. It also discusses the challenges of integrating different product development life cycles, for example, Agile and waterfall, into a coherent and appropriate plan.

Readers of Virtual Project Consulting who buy the book now, will receive a discount of 15% – use buying code WOR2019. Click below!