Is Your Project On-Time?
I talk a lot about on-time projects. For me, this is a key pillar of the success of any project. I will argue that if you deliver on-time, the rest – in a sense – follows.
This might strike many as backwards. Normally you figure if you do a good job then you will deliver on-time. I maintain that often, more often than one would suspect, you can figure out what on-time looks like and then squeeze the project into that period of time. (See: Get The Schedule Right!)
The first time I realized that I had done something unique regarding being “on-time” was in College Air Force ROTC. We had a training program in which the upper class ROTC cadets would run the lower class ROTC cadets through a weekend of intense training at a local Air Force base. I was the cadet officer in charge of training and so was responsible for planning and running this training program.
Towards the end of the weekend, the Commandant of Cadets (an Air Force Officer, not a cadet) commented how this was the first training program he had seen run on-time by the cadets. That stuck in my mind for several reasons. First, it was positive feedback – something often rare in officer training – and second, it struck me as strange. Why would they not usually run on-time? I did it. It didn’t seem too difficult. I had to tactically adjust some of what we did to keep us on-time. I had discussed options, things to do differently, with my team if things started to get behind. I never even imagined that it would not run on-time.
Over the years I came to realize that delivering something on-time was more of a goal, often pursued, but too rarely achieved. While I also suffered through many of these not-on-time efforts, the ones where I got to plan and lead the effort from end to end, always – yes always – delivered on-time.
OK, here are all the qualifications and nuances behind this provocative statement.
I’ve been on many projects that delivered late and buggy software. This is where I observed and learned a lot of my techniques and strategies. I often had bosses who wanted to throw me at problems on a multitude of projects. I explained to them that if they just let me be in on the beginning of the project or just put me in charge at the beginning, we would not have the need to throw more people at the problems. Yes, I know this too sounds a bit bold. No, they didn’t always believe me at first either. One of my lessons learned is that projects are successful for what you do at the beginning and not for how hard you work at the end. (See: Avoid This Schedule Trade Off Trap!)
Many of my lessons learned are illustrated in a large project which was ten days late to the first customer. Our “normal” delivery time at that point was routinely three to four months late. The customers saw us as being on-time from their perspective, so I am very comfortable at saying this was an on-time project. The second region we shipped the product to hit the exact week, and I am pretty sure the exact day it was promised. However, the fourth region was three months late! But that is another lesson learned about how you can tell if the problem is you or the problem really is the customer.
The first project that was ever late that I managed from beginning to end was a week late. I remember it vividly. That occurrence was one key data point in another lesson learned that if things do go wrong it is usually your best people who are implicated (including yourself). Again, this was considered an on-time delivery by management and the customers who were surprised that we were ready when we said we were. Nobody expected us to be anywhere close to the date we promised.
This fuzziness in defining things such as the meaning of “on-time” helped fuel my interest in an objective and statistical approach to project management (see for example: Defect Reports Are Your Best Friend!). However, the bottom line was always that the customer recognized and celebrated the effort as being … on-time.
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