July 14, 2023

Plan ahead to avoid schedule delays

Schedule delays are a common problem for any project, big or small. (In his article for projectmanagement.com, Andy Jordan even says he’s suspicious of any project manager who tells him they’re perfectly on schedule.) And that’s because situations change - maybe there was an unexpected complication, or a staffing change, or even that the timeline wasn’t accurate in the first place.

Other than adding contingency time to a project schedule, there’s not much to be done for any surprises that pop up during a project’s execution. However, we can do something about making sure the project timeline is as complete and accurate as possible. Here are some things to try when estimating a project’s timeline:

• Understand the project team’s areas of expertise. If a team member isn’t fully able to complete a task, it will end up delaying the project. If you know this will be an issue ahead of time, you can schedule in time for training or even assign the task to a team member with more experience in that area.

• Look at historical data. Consult timelines for previous, similar projects and use the actual timeline data to inform the estimate for the new project.

• Create a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS) to break the tasks into smaller components. If you can break the project into small, understandable units, it’s easier to estimate how long each task will take. Once you have the WBS, you can add it back up to get an accurate estimate of how long the entire project will take.

There are many more techniques out there to help estimate a project timeline. The more detailed the method, the more accurate - and time-consuming. The amount of time a project manager is able to spend on a timeline will vary from project to project. In general, however, a good rule of thumb is that the more detail you can put into a project schedule, the more accurate it will be. And by starting with a strong project timeline, you may be able to avoid just a few of those pesky schedule delays.