Be Positive And Don't Delay Work

 Tom glanced at the time.

"Midnight," he thought to himself as he sipped his coffee. The next day was the milestone review for the project's second phase. As he updated the project plan, he discovered that the organisational change management tasks that were supposed to be completed in phase one had been pushed to phase two. He noticed that the tasks were still at 0% completion.

"We'll pick them up later," he told himself, adding the tasks to the phase three workplan.

Gayle, Tom's manager, inquired about the unfinished organisational change management tasks during the next day's milestone review.

"I ran out of time," Tom explained. "We'll finish them in phase three."

"Didn't you tell me that three months ago during our phase one review?" Gayle inquired.

Tom lowered his gaze. "Um, yeah," he replied.

"Phase three is even more intense than phase two; what makes you think you'll complete the OCM tasks in phase three if you didn't complete them in phase one or phase two?"

"Gayle, we'll finish them," Tom assured her.

"OK, Tom, I'm holding you to it."

Three months later, at the phase three milestone review, Tom went over the workplan before moving on to the OCM tasks. Tom was forewarned of what was to come.

"It's still not done," Gayle said, avoiding Tom's gaze.

Before we go any further, I'd like to express a principle that I've witnessed in countless projects as well as personally experienced:

The closer you get to a project's completion date, the less time you have to complete tasks deferred from previous project phases.

It is unusual for availability to do work to increase as the project approaches its final delivery date, and for tasks deferred throughout the project to now have extra time to complete. Typically, the project team works hard to complete only the most critical tasks in order to meet delivery deadlines, with other tasks either deferred to post-release or not completed at all. Those tasks, it is assumed, can be completed later when there is more time. I have two issues with this

If the task was important enough to be included in the original plan, why is it now deemed unimportant enough to be pushed to tomorrow (or not completed at all?)

Tomorrow (nearly) never arrives.

To avoid the temptation of pushing tasks off to the side only to have them die on the vine, consider the following five takeaways:

Don't skimp on planning - Choose your quote: If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. You don't have time to do it right, but you can always do it again; Measure twice, then cut once. The bottom line is to have a realistic and credible plan that focuses on deliverables, has an understood critical path, task owners who are specifically named (rather than "the team"), and clear deadlines.

Just make sure the plan complements the project rather than becoming a project in and of itself.

Resist the urge to postpone tasks - OK, sometimes difficult decisions must be made, and something may need to be postponed. This becomes a problem when it becomes the norm rather than the exception. If you're constantly putting off tasks because you're running out of time, something in your planning needs to change.

When you have to postpone tasks, communicate the consequences - Postponing something until later or eliminating the task entirely means the project will face some incremental risk (assuming the task was value-added in the first place). Have a plan in place to manage any additional risk.

When things go wrong, adjust the plan - I've seen it many times: a project starts out great, the plan is reviewed on a regular basis, and life is good. Then something bad happens. Most of the time, the plan is either not updated to reflect reality or is abandoned entirely. Keep the plan up to date and drive decisions on difficult decisions when tasks must be deferred. Just remember to articulate the implications of your choice (see takeaway 3). Maintain a current and realistic plan.

If it's truly not necessary, get rid of it - When planning your project, do a reality check to ensure that only tasks that are absolutely necessary are included. "What are the consequences if this task isn't completed?" Consider not doing it if there is no clear consequence. Just make sure everyone on the project team agrees on cutting the task before it goes through the shredder.

Remember that the closer you get to a project's completion date, the less time you have to complete tasks that have been pushed back. Resist the urge to put off tasks until tomorrow, because tomorrow rarely comes.