6 Ways To Beat The System And Shorten The Project Schedule
As a project manager, whatever the industry, the most critical question is how to shorten the project schedule. You may handle this request very well if you are familiar with the industry. If you are a junior, you may not know how to start the first step of negotiating with the relevant owners and shorten the duration. I will share 6 important things I’ve learned over 10 years of experience.
Step 1: Create An Overview
Often, project managers focus on shortening the duration but completely forget to check customers’ and project leaders’ expectations for the project’s outcome. In doing so, they miss the opportunity to get an overview or outlook of the plan and goal, all while engaging key opinion leaders in the process.
First, determine if you clearly understand your project leader’s purposes, expectations, and assumptions. Discuss the goals and achievements desired with your project team to determine a rough schedule. At the same time, share the business strategy with team members.
Step 2: Break The Overall Schedule Down To Several Steps
There are some benefits if you can break the schedule down into several steps. The primary use is coordinating and communicating clearly with your project team step by step. It is also a quick way to increase stakeholder trust. They will be able to see and understand the process and progression of the project.
There is a chart with a demonstrated success that I highly recommend. It’s called a Gantt Chart. The Gantt Chart is powerful because it’s a visual tool that allows all persons to understand the project timeline and progression quickly. A quick visual tool like this sharply decreases the time needed for verbal communication.
Step 3: Try Your Best To Understand Every Single Step
You now have a great understanding of the project itself and the goals. Next, we want to determine what is behind each step so we can understand its purpose more clearly.
Is it necessary to be an expert at all things to be an effective and knowledgeable leader? No. It is where you should rely heavily on communication with your team. The Project Manager must know enough to shorten the timeline without wasting energy and time becoming an expert in each step.
Step 4: Stay Ahead Of The Curve
In step 3, you consulted your team members to gain the appropriate related knowledge about the project. Through this, you have determined each step’s duration, purpose, and function. Maybe you still have some questions about your team’s knowledge and scope. Or perhaps you hesitated to ask a question that may prove necessary. Over time, I have found two reliable approaches to resolve these issues.
The first one is to do a bit of homework. Research the technical process and discuss your questions or results with the DRI (directly responsible individual). The second approach is questioning other experts to gain new insights and perspectives. Third-party KOLs can help keep you on the edge of innovation by sharing ideas and innovations. They can often provide a clearer picture of expectations, surprises, and shortsighted issues.
Step 5: Clear Your Concerns Before Negotiations
If you went through step 1 to step 4, you likely have identified alternatives for shortening the project timeline. At this moment, it’s better to involve the Project Leader or Business Leader.
Getting their opinions and recommendations and aligning your progress with the project leader is important because, generally, they are more powerful than you at your company. Honestly, you need their endorsement before negotiating with the related Process Owners.
Step 6: Get Everyone On The Same Page
Eventually, it would help if you published this schedule to everyone. Usually, there are two purposes: The first is to put everyone on the same page; the second is to escalate the plan to top managers. It will help you leverage their authorized power to top-down assign tasks and further pull in the schedule.
I often see Project Managers use the escalation method to get top-down results. You can’t always escalate your schedule to a top manager to pursue a top-down assignment. So project managers could use this method for projects that need extra help in tightening the deadline. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a frustrating timing position.
Key Takeaway
Depending on your awareness of the project overview and related knowledge, you can be the expert on the overall schedule to persuade your team members to get a better result. Though you may not know everything from the beginning, it isn’t difficult as long as you remember. The most important is to work very hard to understand each small part of the overall whole project schedule.
Thank you for taking the time to read this article.
Have a topic or an idea you would like me to write about? If you have any questions, recommendations, or experienced a measure of success with these methods, please leave me a message here. You may win a free 30-minute consultation with me.
Have a nice day. :)
