Ithuta JV

Source: TenStep Article by Tom Mochal

You don't need top panic if you find your project is trending behind schedule. A good project manager has a tool box full of techniques to get back on schedule. A few are listed below.

1. Work Overtime:
Everyone hates it, but one logical place to look at is overtime. If people work more hours, they can get more work done in the same amount of calendar time. Overtime may be the best option if you are close to the end of the project and just need a final push to get everything done on schedule. If you are toward the end of the project, you also may be able to issue comp-time (comparable time off) after the project is completed. If you are still early in the project, there are probably other options that are more effective.
There may be cost implications to this option if you need to have contract resources work overtime.

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2. Reallocate Resources onto the Critical Path:
The project manager must first understand the activities that are on the critical path. After all, if the project is trending over deadline, by definition it is the critical path that is late. Once the critical path is understood, you should try to move your most productive resources onto critical path activities. When the project started you may mot have known exactly which team members are most productive. However, as the project progresses you should try to move your stronger people onto critical path activities. After all, these are the activities that must be completed on time. If you have some less productive team members they may take longer on their activities but that may be okay if they are working off the critical path. Be careful if non-critical path activities take longer than expected they may end up changing the critical path. Always make sure you double check the critical path each time you change the schedule.

3. Swap Resources on the Critical Path:
You saw previously that the first thing you want to do when you are trending over your schedule is to try to determine the cause. One cause you may find is that you have one or more resources that are not as productive as you planned. Perhaps it is because they do not have the right skills. Perhaps it is because they are not as productive in this particular area as they are in other areas. Regardless, there may be opportunities to replace resources. Swapping resources means that you are releasing a team member and bringing in another person from outside the team. (This makes it different than reallocating resources within the project team.) It is likely that when your project started you received the best resources that were available. However, as your project progresses you may realize that other stronger resources are becoming available. These people might be stronger fits for your project.

4. Double-Check all Schedule Dependencies:
Schedule dependencies represent activities that must be completed in a certain order. For instance, if you are building a house, you cannot start putting up the frame until the foundation is poured and dried. If you are trending over your deadline, these dependencies should be re-validated, since it is possible that the schedule is being lengthened by dependencies between activities that are not valid. Invalid dependencies may make it appear that activities must be performed sequentially, when they can really be done in parallel. Sometimes the scheduling software accidentally adds a dependency if you made a mistake entering the activities. Sometimes the project manager adds the dependency on purpose, but upon later review decides that the dependency does not really exist. It might make sense to have the team members review the schedule to see if they find dependencies that the project manager thinks are valid, but that they know to be invalid.
The dependencies should all be double-checked to make sure you have your facts correct before you get into more drastic measures to bring the project back on schedule.

5. Check Time-Constrained Activities:
Time-constrained activities are those that have durations that do not change based on the number of resources applied. For instance, you may be allocating team members to a five-day class. The class takes five days if one person attends, and it takes five days if ten people attend. All of these time-constrained activities should be checked to validate the time frame. Perhaps there are assumptions being made that could be changed with a different approach. For instance, if you allocated three days for a contract to reach a client, perhaps the length could be reduced to one day by paying more for overnight delivery. If you have a two-day wait for concrete to dry, perhaps the time could be shortened by renting fans to blow air on the concrete.

6. Crash the Schedule:
Crashing the schedule means that the end date is so critical that you are willing to throw resources onto the critical path even if the additional resources are not utilized as efficiently as they could. Of course you want to try to be smart and get the biggest schedule gain for the least amount of incremental costs. However, you are trying to get any gain that you can. For instance, if one person were assigned to complete an activity in ten days, you could see if two people could complete it earlier. However, perhaps the second resource does not have all the right skills and if you assigned a second person full time, you might only gain two days inn the schedule. Normally it would not make sense to allocate a second person for eight days just to complete the activity two days early. However, if the schedule was so important that you were crashing perhaps you would make this trade-off.
The additional resources may come from within the project team, or they may be loaned temporarily from outside the team. One of the goals of crashing the schedule is to minimize the incremental cost. However, in exchange for completing some work ahead of schedule, crashing usually always leads to some additional incremental cost to the project. If cost is not as important as the deadline, crashing a set of activities can result in accelerating the schedule.