Week 3: Deadlines
Missing Deadline Is The Indicator. Unless You Do Not Have Any.
Monica prepared draft schedule of her campaign and invited the art director and a few more key players to a meeting to discuss the deadlines.
She introduced the schedule draft to the meeting participants. The team members stared at the screen and looked at each other. Then the art director asked: “why we need to plan these dates now? They will move anyway!”. The rest of group supported this statement with nods and murmurs.
The Challenge: Get Commitment To Deadlines
Monica loves deadlines, just like me. We believe that no project can be successful without imposing deadlines. A project can not be finished on time without the deadlines. No project will be unambiguously successful without a reference to time axis.
But there are multiple points of view when it comes to deadlines.
The first is the customer’s (or sponsor’s) perspective. They perceive project as a very simplistic triangle of the scope, the budget and the time frame. They believe they may place some input to this triangle: enough amount of €/$/£, team, scope and deadlines, and at the end of the day they will see the output: specified scope done, resulting in particular benefits, like a new product sold, a business process optimized, or a successful marketing campaign.
The opposite view, is the one I saw many times when setting up a new project plan with my team. Somebody tells exactly what Monica heard: “Why we need to plan these dates? They will move anyway!”.
The Problem: Afraid To Commit
Even some managers state similar opinion that date-driven project planning is inherently problematic, requiring numerous rewrites over the life of the project.
But when you don't set the dates is like you would choose to never finish the project. It is the best way to obstruct it and make your customer or investor angry and insecure. And that’s because…
… Where Milestone Is, The Date Must Be
Setting up milestones as important events is meaningless if you won’t set the dates for them. Even if your project is a very risky initiative, and you are afraid of committing any dates - set them up. You will help yourself, your customers and bosses.
The Lesson Learnt
When choosing not to set dates you take away from you the opportunity to plan the cash flow and to find the moment when it is the high time to abandon the project or to radically change i