How To Set Realistic Deadlines When Everything Is Changing All The Time

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If the question “when will we be able to launch?” makes you feel like a deer in headlights, you’re likely finding it difficult to set (and stick to) realistic deadlines.

With the number of task management systems and project management tools out there, you might think all you have to do is load in your project plan, assign the work and deadlines, and let the team do their thing (and if you’re an experienced project manager, you probably just laughed out loud).

Here’s why setting realistic deadlines is important and how to do it right so you can deliver projects on time and keep your clients and stakeholders happy.

Why Is it Important To Set Realistic Deadlines?

Setting deadlines is essential to project success for many reasons, not the least of which is delivering on commitments.

  • In an agency setting, projects are sold based on projected team capacity. Pushing things a day or two here and there usually doesn’t have a long-term negative effect, but extending timelines by weeks or months can mess up timelines for other work that relies on those team members.
  • This is not unlike in-house project work. Say you’re managing a new website launch. You tell the communications team the site will go live three months after your kickoff meeting. Then, a stakeholder adds some new features one month in. Now, you’re looking at five or six months to launch. You need to reallocate resources to accommodate the new end date.

These examples illustrate how not setting timelines can devastate project teams and the entire organization, but you might also find yourself in a situation where an unrealistic project deadline is imposed on the team by a client or stakeholder.

How To Set Realistic Deadlines: The Textbook Version

If you’ve done any PM training, you’ve probably spent lots of time learning to estimate realistic task time frames. This might be using a top-down estimation technique, a bottom-up estimation technique, or an analogous estimation process.

For example, let’s say you’re estimating the time it will take to design a homepage for a new website. If you’ve used a time tracker, you know that, in the past, it’s taken your designer:

  • 6 hours to mock up an initial design
  • 1 hour for the internal team to review it (designer, developer, project manager, creative director)
  • 1 hour to present it to a client or stakeholders
  • 2 hours to make revisions
  • 1 hour for internal review
  • 1 hour to re-review with the client
  • 2 hours to finalize the design and package for development
  • 1 hour for handoff between design and development

How many days should you estimate for this process in your project planning instructions? Let’s say you decide on two weeks based on your current data. How does that look? Break down the project tasks as follows:

Week 1

  • Monday/Tuesday: mock-up initial design
  • Wednesday: internal review
  • Thursday: client or stakeholder review
  • Friday: client or stakeholder feedback

Week 2

  • Monday: revisions
  • Tuesday: internal review
  • Wednesday: client or stakeholder review
  • Thursday: client or stakeholder feedback
  • Friday: final revisions, package files, and hand off to dev

If the above timeframe feels too aggressive, you can add padding to the timeline and stretch this to two and a half or three weeks. This is useful in situations where you know your stakeholders will have a lot of feedback and your designer won’t be able to turn around revisions on such a tight timeline.

While it doesn’t look like too many hours to fit in that timeframe, you might want to add some buffer time proactively so that work doesn’t drag on and upset your entire schedule.

Project timeline

How To Set Realistic Deadlines: The Real-World Version

It’s time for a healthy dose of reality. You must learn to read between the lines when running a successful project with realistic deadlines.

Consider the scenario outlined above—you need to account for the people doing the work. If you have a designer who procrastinates or lacks deadline management skills, create a sense of urgency to get things done. The more you know about your team’s habits, the easier it is to set realistic deadlines.

Another essential consideration are the unknowns or X factors. These fall outside the scope of typical project planning or estimating, but can profoundly impact the timeline and your ability to set realistic deadlines.

Think about it: When you’re asked to set up a project schedule, tasks, and due dates at the project’s kickoff, you might not know very much about the project’s specifics and the stakeholders involved. As the project unfolds, you’ll get much more accurate in setting realistic project work deadlines.

Examples of unknowns or X-factors that can impact deadlines and project timelines include:

  • New stakeholders coming into a project at the eleventh hour
  • Extreme weather and global pandemics
  • Mass layoffs or reductions in force
  • New technology or sunsetting of current technology for integrations or dependencies

How To Know It’s Time To Change A Deadline

If you need to change a deadline, be proactive. For example, if you’re working on a website and it’s scheduled to launch on a specific day that lines up with other marketing activities (a news release, media planned coverage, or a campaign launch), these activities must happen in the correct order.

In this scenario, the site should be launched a few days before the marketing campaign kicks off. That way, there’s time to work out any final kinks or address any bugs. But we all know how it goes: a late kickoff or delayed approvals along the way can push us to really tighten up timelines.

If it looks like the project is way behind schedule and you’re coming up to the launch date, it’s probably a good idea to coordinate with stakeholders to either speed things up, prioritize what is needed for launch day, or move the deadline.

Have frequent check-ins to take the temperature of the team and keep an eye on the project’s progress.

How do you know whether to pressure the team to meet the deadlines or start moving things around? There are some subtle (and not-so-subtle) signs that it’s time to conduct project deadline management and re-align your schedule with more realistic deadlines. These include:

  • Work being blocked because dependent tasks are incomplete
  • The project scope has changed and the timeline never accounted for additional work
  • The team is beginning to feel stressed
  • There are increased risks associated with rushing through tasks
  • Additional requirements have been exposed
  • Significant bugs or quality issues have been brought to light 

If you’re still unsure about whether or not a deadline around time needs to be adjusted, create a contingency plan with your team members. Ask them to try to meet the original deadline, but come up with a checkpoint (well before the actual deadline) to assess progress and make the final decision.

That way, you enable the team to complete the work as quickly as possible but you’re still providing a safety net in case they need one.

About Marissa Taffer


Marissa Taffer, PMP, A-CSM is the founder and president of M. Taffer Consulting. In her consulting practice, she helps organizations with project management processes and tools. She also serves as a fractional project manager supporting digital agencies, marketing departments, and other consultancies.

This article originally appeared on TheDigitalProjectManager.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.


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7 Ways to Be More Productive At Work With No Effort

7 Ways to Be More Productive At Work With No Effort

We all want to be more productive at work—but what are the secrets to being more productive with less effort? The challenge we have as project managers comes from feeling like we have way too much to do and not enough time to do it.

Parkinson’s Law —that work expands to fill the amount of time available for its completion—means that if we give ourselves a week to complete a two hour task, then (psychologically speaking) the task increases in complexity and become more daunting so as to fill that week.

There are lots of things we can do at work that feel like being productive, but they are actually just filling up time. This includes things like checking email, chatting in Slack, and going to meetings—it all fills time. It may even be important, but it’s not actually productive work.

I tend to be pretty optimistic. By nature, I’m a “just wing it” kind of guy. So when I first started my career as a project manager and relied on my natural instincts, perhaps unsurprisingly, projects kept going over budget and slipping past their timelines. Clients got mad when they didn’t get what they thought they had paid for.

It was soon brought to my attention that the way I was managing projects wasn’t really managing at all. In fact, I was just letting projects happen around me, hoping that everything would work itself out in the end.

Lesson learned? We need to focus on doing important, relevant tasks that actually manifest the outcomes we’re going for.

We need to learn how to be more productive at at work. One way I achieved this is by leveraging resource management software tools that help in prioritizing and allocating resources efficiently.

JLco – Julia Amaral/istockphoto

Figuring out how to be more productive at work is harder than it sounds…or is it? It’s always going to feel like there’s too much to do and not enough time to do it—but that’s doesn’t mean we are really getting the right things done. If we were to create a list of the tasks you do while at work that make you “feel” productive but aren’t, it would be a long list including activities like checking Slack, digging through files, and checking your phone.

We hear a lot about becoming more productive, and we’ve written quite a bit on productivity hacks for project managers. That said, the following productivity hacks won’t tell you how to increase productivity by focusing on getting more tasks done in less time. Instead, we’ll talk about how to be productive by learning to prioritize activities that are truly productive.

Read on to discover some of the best productivity hacks I’ve learned to get more positive results out of yourself while expending less effort.

shironosov/istockphoto

Back to that email inbox you’re checking 18 times a day (I’m willing to bet that you just checked it—am I right?). Was there anything truly significant in your inbox that wasn’t there 10 minutes ago? My guess is that none of the new items arriving to your coveted inbox were really important.

What if, instead of checking your email every 10 or 15 minutes and getting nothing done, you check your email just a few set times per day? If you want a quick productivity improvement, checking your email less frequently is an easy change to make.

As soon as you get to your desk in the morning, give yourself ten or fifteen minutes to check and do quick responses. Then give it a quick check again around mid-morning (just in case an important late morning email has come in). Check it again just after lunch, and then for the final time in, check it about an hour or so before it’s time to head home.

I am sure at this point you are asking yourself how on earth am I supposed to NOT check my email numerous times of day. The pings and beeps and other noises that alert you to any new incoming emails can be a constant source of interruptions. And interruptions, as you well know, reduce focus and productivity. The easiest, most effective way to avoid this is to close out of your email program completely. Not having email open will make it harder to peek at email constantly and make it easier for you to concentrate on one thing at a time.

Jacob Wackerhausen/istockphoto

Put down the smartphone. While it’s super tempting to check your phone for text messages, FB, Twitter, SnapChat, and the like, work isn’t really the time to do that. Give yourself a little break from the social cyber world for a few hours. Harness your energy for a few hours and put that into your task at hand.

There are loads of great software and apps for effectively managing tasks. Take advantage of these tools to easily view and prioritize tasks. Maybe you prefer a paper list, but whatever you choose, don’t lose time digging around for your list—it is supposed to be there to help save time and stay focused!

My advice is to put absolutely every task onto the list. This will help you avoid multitasking by having a clear idea of exactly what you’re trying to work on at any given moment. While multitasking at home is often a necessity—you’re helping the kids with homework, doing laundry, all the while cooking dinner and answering a phone call—it is not great for higher-order thinking. Especially for knowledge workers, multitasking at work is not usually the best answer and can ultimately render you less productive than if you just tackle one task at a time. Does that mean you shouldn’t answer the phone? No—but it does mean that you should try to make it brief, just to get the necessary facts. You can call back to have a more leisurely conversation after your task is completed.

Liubomyr Vorona/istockphoto

Do you put the most difficult or intense tasks at the top of your list and try to complete them in the morning hours (after at least a cup of coffee, of course)? It seems counter-intuitive for people who want to “ease into” the day. But it’s easier to focus and complete harder tasks before your lunch break, while your mind is still fresh. If you’re like me, once those mid-afternoon hours roll around, your eyes have a mind of their own and all they want to do is close and rest! Leave the daily tasks that require less self-control for the afternoon hours.

insta_photos/Istockphoto

Remember, though—just because you’re doing the hard stuff doesn’t mean you should press on until you’re drained. While it doesn’t seem like it’s productive, taking breaks can increase the quality of your work and improve your mood, stamina, and health. Don’t forget to get up from your desk a few times in the morning as well as in the afternoon and give yourself a “brain break”. Just a short 5 minutes will do the trick to refresh your mind and rejuvenate your energy. Those 5 minutes will more than pay for themselves in higher quality thinking down the road.

JLco – Julia Amaral/istockphoto

If you see a task that will take 2 minutes or less to complete, do it now. Why 2 minutes? Because a task this short would consume more time to add to your to-do list and prioritize than to simply get it done right off the bat. If you can get on top of the small tasks as soon as you see them, your to-do list will be less clogged up, and so will your brain.

As project managers, it’s critical we don’t become a bottleneck for the project. Because of this, we’ve often got a continuous cycle of thoughts going “Oh, I need to remember to move that spreadsheet to the other folder”. Unfortunately, these types of nagging thoughts are taking up space in your brain that could be devoted to more important work. For quick tasks, just “do it now” and pat yourself on the back for checking it off your to-do list before it even got there!

Kateryna Onyshchuk/istockphoto

The dreaded office meeting! The email (that you are now only checking 3 or 4 times a day) landed in your inbox on Monday afternoon: “Office meeting to be held on Wednesday at 1:30pm”.  Immediately you think, “Well, there goes my entire afternoon”. If the moderator of the meeting doesn’t know how to properly run a meeting, then you are correct.

If you are the meeting organizer, consider using a productivity tool like Slack if the result of the conversation does not require immediate action. But if you do need to hold that meeting, here are a few simple ideas that you can employ to make your meeting run smoothly and quickly:

  • Keep meetings small and short—only invite people vital to the meeting.
  • Pick a single topic for the meeting and don’t get sidetracked.
  • Consider holding the meeting in a space that allows everyone to stand—that will help keep it as short as possible.
  • Start and adjourn your meetings on time.
  • At the conclusion of the meeting, make sure that there is a plan of action for the day, week, or even month.

In order to make meetings as quick and productive as possible, the items that you cover have to be documented and useful to your team. I recommend managing timelines and tasks set in your meetings with any number of project management software tools making them easy to modify and share. Some of you might be familiar with standard project management tools like Microsoft Project, but there a number of great MS alternatives out there as well.

fizkes/Istockphoto

If you feel like you have too much on your plate and you simply can’t focus, it’s time to set boundaries with coworkers who are distractions. This is especially true when you’re trying to be productive while working from home. Stand up for your productivity, and politely and firmly decline work with coworkers who distract you.

Likewise, don’t agree to take on work if you look at it and know that you won’t be able to contribute positively to the project. As a manager myself, I’m happier when team members say, “You know what? I just don’t feel like I am going to be an asset on this project and here is why…” instead of wasting their time (and impacting the productivity of the company’s people and resources) because they were afraid to set boundaries.

About the author

I’m Ben Aston, a digital project manager and founder of thedpm.com. I’ve been in the industry for more than 20 years working in the UK at London’s top digital agencies including Dare, Wunderman, Lowe and DDB. I’ve delivered everything from film to CMS’, games to advertising and eCRM to eCommerce sites. I’ve been fortunate enough to work across a wide range of great clients; automotive brands including Land Rover, Volkswagen and Honda; Utility brands including BT, British Gas and Exxon, FMCG brands such as Unilever, and consumer electronics brands including Sony. I’m a Certified Scrum Master, PRINCE2 Practitioner and productivity nut!

This article originally appeared on Thedigitalprojectmanager.com and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org

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Featured Image Credit: KatarzynaBialasiewicz.

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