Project Management Training — Handling an Impossible Deadline

A Project Manager just presented her project schedule to the executive review committee. They want the 10-month project the Project Manager proposed to "happen" in three months. They're adamant. How does the Project Manager handle this impossible deadline?

One could use a couple of different strategies:

• Staged Deliver Plan: If the project wasn’t already using a staged delivery plan, it may be wise to adopt one immediately. Staged delivery does not actually reduce the amount of time required to deliver the software, but it reduces the amount of time that seems to be required to deliver software. Although the project may not be done in three months, staged releases force development teams to "converge" the software – bring it to a released state – multiple times over the course of the project. Hence, three months into the project, a crude yet working version of the project may be completed. This may be enough to satisfy executives.



• Use of Project Management software and critical path analysis: One can use Project Management software to tighten (compress) the schedule in several ways. Critical path (CP) analysis can be used to make schedule trade-offs, such as determining free and total slack or free float. Using these changes, it is possible to determine whether adding resources or scheduling overtime will significantly shorten the duration of the Critical path (CP).



• Scope reduction: The Project Manager could ask the executive review committee to reduce project scope in order to meet the deadline.



• Crashing: Schedule compression for the least incremental cost. This may involve adding additional team members, outside contractors, end users, etc., in order to shorten activity duration. The cost may be minimal (or none) if, say, the end user was involved in beta testing. This would shorten the testing phase and allow developers and programmers to focus on other activities.



• Fast tracking: Allows one to do sequential activities in parallel. There is, however, the danger that fast tracking involves greater project risk since activities done in haste may lead to errors and rework.



• Play the political game: Buddy up with one or more executives and convince them that you need more time. Sometimes if you have friends on “the other side”, you can get your way.