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You had planned a specific date to deliver the project but for some reason you can see that you are missing the milestone or delivery date. This could have occurred due to various factors such as last minute requirement changes, lack of resources, people having left the project midway due to various reasons, etc etc. What do you do?
The best way to handle such a situation is to understand the areas where you could be slipping
Early Bird slipping:
The first time you slip in a project you know that you need to pay attention and don’t take the first slip lightly. It’s a sign to look closely at the project. If you think we can deal with this later then you are wrong as later down the track other slips will come your way.
As a Project Manager when you see a slip you have several options to deal with this right from the start these are related to project quality and constraints within a project. The way to handle this is using the following methods:
– Change the date for delivery if new requirements are introduced
– Create a phase 2 for delivering feature sets that were not discussed prior to development or work commencing
– Request for additional resources
– Increase the project cost
– have the ability to change the deliverables based on new requirements or functionality introduced.
Mid Project Messups
If for some reason you ignored the initial slips in the project and now you are in the middle of the project, then how do you address the problem. It may be possible to inject more people into the project, or change the way you work. Another way is to let the key stakeholders that they should expect delay or if you have to deliver on time then alterations to the feature set or the number of defects expected should be taken into consideration. It’s hard to decrease the feature set once expectations are created, its better to change the way people are working within your team to hit the milestone or delivery date. If you do add more people to the project, ensure everyone understands their roles so that you don’t slow the project.
At the last hour project slip ups
You end up here only after countless slip ups. if milestones are being missed during the project life cycle both by business as well as technical staff don’t and i repeat don’t take this lightly. Try and manage the expectations and address every situation to the stake holders so that they are aware of the issues the project is facing way before it’s too late. If for some reason still you are in this boat then you need to get your self sorted first before you start pointing fingers and finding loopholes within the project. Get your act sorted, get to know the facts before you try and change the way people are working. Create a situation where the people working on the project speak up and work with you to cross this hurdle.
We at ChillX.com wish you the very best in your project delivery. Should you be willing to attend a practical project management course which is hands on then do register for the course Get Real – The Art of Project Management provided by the team at ChillX.
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