Dead by Deadlines
By: Anand Udapudi
Tags: Time, Time Management, Project Management, Efficiency, Deadlines

Author –Nehru Nagappan — CEO, Project Leadership Academy, Malaysia

Ever been in a situation where the project deadlines were “imposed” on you arbitrarily rather than a detailed planning exercise? If your answer is yes, then you are NOT alone. It is a common complaint among project teams across the globe that business doesn’t estimate project deadlines accurately. The fault, however, doesn’t like entirely with them.

Have you ever questioned HOW the deadlines were derived by the senior management and/or the sales team? Often, the response to this is no. Guess what? You’ve set yourself up for failure even before the project has been confirmed. Subjecting your project team to project deadlines estimated through “inspiration from God” or “plucking from the sky”, or a “top-down estimation” is definitely not a good way to start!

The habit of setting deadlines before planning

In many instances, deadlines are randomly thrown at Project Managers without accounting for key factors of the project — the size of the project, the actual effort, and resources needed, a detailed list of expected tasks and the time required to complete them, etc.

The general demands of Business teams from Project Managers is to finish the project on time, with the best quality product, at the cheapest price possible! This is NOT a good practice.

This mandate compels Project Managers to place deadline as a priority over cost and quality. If you haven’t realized it yet, this practice is detrimental to the project. We must realize that deadlines are not the primary drivers for most projects.

Instead, as Project Managers, it is our responsibility to highlight the order of priority in the project — should the project be driven by the non-negotiable deadline? Should the focus be on delivering the best quality output? Or should cost/budget be the priority in how a project turns out?

The Project Triangle

The three criteria of Time, Cost and Quality are commonly called the Project Triangle.

The Project Triangle highlight the constraints that most teams face when fulfilling a project requirement. Despite pressures from business teams to deliver a quality product, on time, and under budget, it is important that Project Managers do not bow down to this ill-advised demand.

Rather, it is pertinent to educate business teams that while these three criteria can be stretched, only ONE of the three criteria can be given higher weightage.

Having said that, do not get the wrong idea that only ONE of the project drivers is important. All THREEconstraints must be managed simultaneously.

You may use this as a guideline:

Choose only ONE of the three constraints as the PRIMARY driver of the project.

Once chosen, the other two are not neglected or ignored, but they become lesser priority compared to the chosen PRIMARY driver.

When we focus on one of the three as the PRIMARY driver, the other two drivers may need to compromise.

In deciding the driver that best works for a project, it is important to keep the following criteria in mind:

Would it cause any safety, life or death issues?

Would it cause any embarrassment to the organization/nation?

Let’s delve deeper into each element of the Project Triangle.