No matter how carefully I plan, my project reports often show the project to be over budget and behind schedule. My team works hard, so how can I stop this discouraging trend?
- Bring all projects in on budget and on schedule with no exceptions
- Start an educational campaign for your manager and team
- Pad each activity with extra time and money
- Ask customers where you can cut quality so that your projections are more on target
- Look for a new job
Answer: B. Start an educational campaign for your manager and team.
Report figures that are off projection concern managers, project sponsors, and are unsettling for project teams. All the stakeholders need to realize that projects may appear to be over budget and behind schedule at some point, but may not end that way. It’s up to the project manager to involve others in choosing the way the team arrives at project figures. You may also need to help them interpret the reports to provide a more accurate picture of project progress. Try some of the following tactics:
- Use realistic daily estimates. Spread activity estimates over the calendar, allowing for holidays, vacations, company meetings, phone calls and other interruptions. Estimate that a resource can devote between 4.8 to 6 hours (60-75%) to project work in a normal 8-hour day. Otherwise, your reports have the potential of being off 10 hours per resource during the first week of the project.
- Set panic limits ahead of time. Most projects can vary slightly on cost and time on a weekly basis and still get back on track. It is not necessary to panic at every variance. For example, if you are over budget $1.57 on a $25,000 project, that is not as big of a deal as if you are off $1.57 on a $2.00 project. Decide from the start what percentage of schedule or cost variance will trigger you to intervene.
- Track progress at reasonable intervals. Reports generated too frequently, or too infrequently, can become problems. A daily update may be necessary for a project that is two weeks in duration, but it would be overkill for a project that is nine months in duration. Appropriate tracking timing will produce more meaningful results.
- Consider posting details. How do you accrue fixed costs, for example? If you apply the costs of equipment, materials, etc., at the beginning of the project – when they are typically acquired – the project budget may look overloaded. If you add them at the end, your reports may appear artificially under budget. Both methods are used, but consider your choice and its implications when interpreting your project reports.
- Use automated deadlines built into software. Automated tools can set deadlines, which will alert you if you are missing them. This may be a better way to schedule than setting constraints, which will make tasks appear they can’t be done earlier when preceding tasks finish early.
Reports are vital when monitoring and controlling a project. An awareness of why reports may be temporarily off-target, knowledge of when to reassure others, and a sense of when to spring into action to influence future results, separates the good project managers from the great.
Thanks to Barbee Davis, M.A., PHR, PMP, for contributing this Quick Quiz and answer. Ms. Davis is a reviewer for the global PMI Registered Education Provider Review Team. She owns Davis Consulting and is a published author, speaker, writer of training materials and an innovator in presentation skill workshops for corporate trainers. She holds a Black Belt in MS Project and teaches at the university level. Ms. Davis encourages your questions or comments.