The data on project performance is distressing. 

A staggering 91.5% of projects go over budget, over schedule, or both.  Worse. Less than 1% of projects are completed on time and on schedule, and actually deliver the benefits promised. Bent Flyvbjerg (Author of How Big Things Get Done)

The average project cost overrun was 27%. Harvard Business Review Research

Much of these cost overruns result from schedule delays.  According to Master of Project Academy, the biggest issues in terms of project management are schedule delays (47.2%) followed by incompetent resources (24.5%) and budget overruns (5.7%).

So, let’s focus on the most important and suggest some basics in how we can avoid schedule delays and get our projects done done done on time.

• Consider the Big Picture: Look at the project and its objective from an overall perspective to ensure that the objectives are doable within the time and budget allotted for the project.

• Pre-plan and prepare: Take the time to develop a detailed, tested, and doable plan before doing anything else.  This means doing the work upfront to ensure that as many unknowns and even a few unknown unknowns are known, understood, and planned for.  Nail down the details and determine the conflicts and clashes upfront.  Partner with the people who are actually going to do the work and get their insights and buy-in. As Bent Flyvbjerg writes, “think slow and act fast.” 

• Simplify and eliminate: Whether it is an IT project, an internal improvement project, a construction project, or any other type of project, look to simplify and eliminate unessential objectives and tasks wherever and whenever possible.

• Map out the project: Working as a collective team, put together a detailed overall schedule for the completion of the project, including a sequencing of when the tasks are going to be done and by whom.

First, be realistic:  Avoid the planning fallacy (the tendency to be too optimistic about our estimates) by considering the base rate for all tasks (how long such tasks have taken in the past) and use the base rate durations unless there is an excellent justification for why these durations can be shortened.

Second, start with the end in mind: When scheduling and sequencing, start at the end of the job and work backwards to the beginning.

Third, consider the critical path: Focus in relentlessly on those activities that are on the critical path (the stretch of activities that are dependent upon one another and the time required to complete them from start to finish).  Look to shorten this critical path wherever possible by speeding up the time of the tasks on the critical path or by doing activities in parallel at the same time.  Pay particular attention to items that might be on the critical path of a critical path item.  As an example, a long lead time item that is needed for someone to complete their task on the critical path.

Fourth, focus on the constraint or bottleneck in the process or schedule: As described in Eliyahu Goldratt’s classic 1984 book, The Goal, we need to identify the constraint – the absolutely most important bottleneck / critical resource / limiting factor / rate-determining step. Decide how to improve this constraint. Focus relentlessly on this constraint, subordinating everything else to the above decision and elevating the importance and making visible this constraint.

Fifth, create a catch-up plan:  Mistakes and delays will happen, and commitments will not be kept.  It is important to plan out ahead of time what actions and repercussions will be taken when someone falls behind in the schedule.  The catch-up plans will usually cost more money.  But they need to be designed to not delay the schedule.

Sixth, get buy in: Get buy in and commitment from everyone involved in the project to the sequencing and the schedule.

Finally, simplify, eliminate, and revise:  Repeat these detailed mapping activities until there is a well thought out and achievable project sequence and schedule.  We always need to remember the words of process expert Michael Hammer, “You don’t have the right processes if it takes exceptional people to do ordinary things or if it takes heroics to perform tasks that should be routine.”

• Avoid Changes Like the Plague: If we have done our job and pre-planned and prepared well, there should be no or minimal (and minor) changes.  Any changes made once the project has started are killers to both cost and schedule.

• Set up Accountability Metrics: The business author Chris Cooper says it well.  Create a “simple, at-a-glance analysis of actual process performance vs. planned and theoretical.  Also enable the team to highlight problems and their relative impact in order to sequence problem-solving and improvement efforts.”

• Hold Everyone Accountable: Holding everyone accountable to completing their tasks in the sequence and within the scheduled time.  No excuses.  This is the fundamental day to day activity of the project leadership team.  For those that are not keeping to the sequence and schedule, implement the catch-up plan as detailed out above.

Focusing on these seven basics will not ensure that our projects will be completed on time.  There are still the challenges of incompetent resources (that is, poor project management and leadership) and the unknown unknowns which too often occur as a project progress.  But, following these seven basics, will certainly ensure that our projects get completed more quickly and maybe, just maybe, on time.