Handling the Pressure to Deliver Early

Getting pressured by management to deliver a project early is common, so you should be ready for it. It’s important to note that pushing an early delivery doesn’t mean you’re in crisis mode. It’s a risk vs business value balancing act. Here are tips to balance risk and bring in the project delivery date. 

Cut requirements and initial product reviews. When working with a homogenous stakeholder group, cutting reviews can save you time, with controllable risk. Before proposing this, ensure your stakeholders all have the same business goals. Also, ensure they are attending status meetings, so they understand project decisions. Alternately, you can perform requirements and product reviews while development continues. This introduces the risk of needing to back up to make corrections. But it is less risky than skipping reviews.

Logically cut testing. Logically approaching test plans can be effective when looking to deliver early. Test only those functions where faults will have a notable business impact. That way, you can fix errors found after delivery with minimal impact on stakeholders. This is different from cutting testing altogether. Broad testing cuts deliver mixed results, at best. Often, the impact of recovering from substantial errors overcomes any time savings.

Reduce scope. Cutting scope can be the easiest way to deliver early but often has hidden risks. Stakeholders’ disappointment with the reduced scope can diminish confidence in the project outcomes. Also, confidence in the project team, and in project management can suffer. Before cutting scope, poll stakeholders. Understand their views on delivering early, versus reducing scope.

Fast tracking or crashing tasks. Save time by changing your schedule and working on tasks in parallel (fast tracking). Or, you can add people to complete tasks earlier (crashing). Fast tracking adds product risk, as working tasks in parallel can create rework. For example, let us say I decided to write book chapters in parallel. The risk is what end up with in Chapter 5 might mean I have to change something already written in Chapter 6. Crashing adds a different risk. Crashing adds cost, as you spend more to perform the task. This is because crashing requires more coordination between people to avoid errors. The lesson? Apply fast tracking or crashing with consideration to the added risk.

Deploy agile methods. Agile often results in early delivery of business value. But it isn’t for every project. If you aren’t using agile techniques, before making the switch ensure you have a leader versed in agile. That leader can confirm what projects are right for agile. They can also guide the team, and management, through agile to improve success.

Do you have any tips and tricks to handle the pressure of delivering a project early? Share with us in the comments section.

For more about how to handle the pressures of delivering a project early, check out my project management foundations course.

Coming up:

I have an Office Hours in the works for September with Doug Rose and Chris Croft, two of my (many) idols in the LinkedIn Learning instructor community. Look for more info soon!