Question

Describe your experience working on projects with tight deadlines and how you were able to meet any challenges that threatened to impede your progress.

Answer 1

Projects usually do come with stringent timelines and this is part and parcel of working in any big corporate or startup companies.I have personally worked across multiple such projects, and that's why I would mention practical learning that I had garnered.

1. To start with, the project management tracker must be prepared that includes below activities:

a) Understanding the objective of the project - The objective of the project must be known and understood completely. To get full ownership of the entire stakeholders who are going to be involved in the project, the objective must be communicated clearly to them, so that they understand what value they would provide ultimately to the organization. Realization of contributing value helps to bring out the best in most of the people, and as the project is going to be on tight deadlines, it would require going out of the way by some stakeholders.

b) Understanding the scope and list down all activities including sub activities - All the activities including sub activities must be listed clearly and mentioned .You can use any project management tool like MS Office Project Management, SmartSheets etc.

c) Put timelines against each activity and assign an owner to each subactivity/activity: Put the timelines and owner against each activity basis the normal turn around time (TAT) to complete the activity. The timelines must be aggressive on the realistic side so that owners also understand they have to put in significant effort to get the activity completed. Also, get the timelines agreed from each owner and make them understand that their contribution and adhering timelines is highly critical for the organization. There should not be any case of joint ownership. If any activity is dependent on two or more actors, then the activity must be broken down into sub activity so as to ensure one single owner of sub-activity. At the activity level, there must be still a single owner who has to ensure all the sub-activities are completed.

d) Prepare Gantt Chart Importantly, check for inter-dependent activities and see what activities can be done in parallel, or what activities are bottleneck activities. Classifying the activities as parallel or bottleneck would help greatly - because if any activity can be done in parallel to an activity, then that can be done and the starting date of the activity can be much early and that would provide more breathing space for timelines. The most important are the bottleneck activities for which the thorough discussion must be done with the owner of that activity, and foresee the potential risks that would thwart the completion of that activity. Once all above activities are done, please share this charter among all the stakeholders and also copy the relevant heads of the verticals/ departments involved in the project. Release the Gantt Chart and highlight the critical path to ensure urgency among the critical path owners.

2. Second stage is the critical one which is the implementation stage. As the project manager, you must collaborate and work closely with each activity owner. As per the tracker, keep an update on the ongoing activities and upcoming ones.

In case of ongoing activity, keep a regular follow-up about the progress with the owner and discuss with him/her about the challenges being faced. If there are bottlenecks or the challenges being faced which owner is not able to solve, highlight to the top management and get their attention on solving it. This activity must be done before the end date, so that management can intervene and help in closing activity as per timeline.

On the daily level, please share the updates on the progress of each ongoing activity and the probable completion date for the activity. Also highlight all the challenges being faced, and their timeline of the completion of the activity with owner. This will ensure nothing is being kept out of the project management schedule and all activities have finite timeline to complete.

If an activity is going to end, the owner of the upcoming activity must be alerted about his activity going to be closed.

3. Risk Management: Thorough discussion must happen with each owner about the potential or current risks that would delay the timeline. And there must be a risk management or contingency plan to counter that especially on activities that lie on critical path. The alternate plan must be ready before hand and some resources must be allocated to that plan so that in case of emergency, the alternate plan can be taken up immediately.

For example in mobile handset development, quality reliability is very important stage and during that, there is always a probability of handset failing the test which could lead to delay in the overall project. In such cases, to avoid the risks, prior learning or experience must be incorporated to improve chances of success. Secondly, alternate handsets with different parameters must be prepared in parallel so that in case the handsets under testing fail, new ones can be put to testing immediately.

4. Review and Reward: The project plan must be reviewed weekly and update must be given on the progress. Also a dashboard can be released where percentage achievement of tasks completion by owners can be highlighted. During the project stage itself, please make sure to highlight and/or reward good achievers who had gone extra mile to complete the tasks.

Proactiveness, full ownership, collaboration, assertiveness and being pre-emptive are key qualities that are being required to ensure the timeline adherence.