situation for a project manager
A project manager is working on a single large project for a year. She received a call
from her project’s sponsor. The two of them have a good business relationship. The
project manager is exactly 2 months away from the project’s hard deadline and her
project’s sponsor wants the deadline bumped up by 3 weeks.
He says it is due to an unforeseen market change and it is critical - so much so that the
project will be worthless if it is not received by the new deadline. The project manager
knows that meeting this new deadline will be particularly challenging due to some
personal vacations and training plans that her project team members already have
planned during this timeframe.
What does the project manager do in this situation?
Answer:
You have to move quickly, which you can do if you understand the sponsor’s priorities
and the project’s critical path. You need to quickly find the answers to a few key
questions: Is there a financial reserve you can use for schedule crashing? Is there a
possibility that the employees can be given extra vacation days for shifting their planned
vacations? Is the planned training something that must happen during this time, or can it
be postponed? What other internal and external resources might be able to help finish
the work?
These are the tools and techniques that are most important:
1. High level planning. You should know the project’s
flexibility profile. Even if it wasn’t before, you know that the time is now inflexible.
The flexibility profile should tell you if you should shorten the time by reducing
scope or by adding cost/resources to the project.
2. Review the WBS to see what deliverables
may be taken out of the project to help meet the revised schedule.
3. Cost budgeting. Review the cost budget
contingencies to see what financial resources can be used for schedule crashing.
Can you provide financial incentives to the vendors and employees to help with
the schedule crisis?
4. Network diagramming. See step 16 in the workbook. The critical path on the
network diagram will show you the activities that should be shortened. Start by
crashing and fast tracking the longest activities on the critical path.
5. Change control plan. See step 24 in the workbook. Follow the change control
plan to ensure that the conscious decisions for changes to the project get correctly
integrated through the project – including the communications of the changes.
