Understanding Schedules as Project Manager

"Can You Finish Earlier?" Answering the Most Common PM Question

If you are a project manager, the chances are that at some point, someone will ask, “Can we wrap this up any sooner?” 

There are numerous, and probably, very good reasons for completing a project earlier. Beating a competitor to market, the ability to take on a new project that’s come up, or even just impressing a new (and impatient) client. 

Business managers may feel that their project manager is overly conservative with their timelines. After all, in the past, your projects have finished well ahead of the deadline.

Everyone would wrap their projects earlier in an ideal world, giving them more time to iron out the small details and perfect the task at hand. Unfortunately, projects are often at the mercy of elements far beyond the project manager’s control.

Look to the Deterministic Schedules to see if anything can be accelerated

Understanding Deterministic Scheduling

The question “How do you know if you can finish earlier?” was posted on a recent Project Omar podcast. In order to answer correctly, it’s critical to look at deterministic scheduling, one of the most common scheduling methods used by Project Managers. 

Every project needs a budget and a schedule to succeed. Every schedule, in turn, is made up of a network of tasks. Some tasks run in parallel, while others are dependent or connected to others. Each assignment will have a planned duration, predecessor, and successor. The total duration of the project is a fixed or deterministic value. 

As an example, at a construction site, the work cannot be completed until an HVAC unit arrives from the vendor. The vendor states that the lead time from the order until delivery will take three months. It may arrive sooner, but the fastest it’s assumed to land is three months. Thus, the deterministic value of the project is three months, the maximum speed the project can take. 

Your project manager will not likely share their deterministic schedule, but if you want insight into how fast a project can run, you need a line of sight into all the schedules of the various role-players. 

If you are the project manager sharing your deterministic schedule, it’s essential to share the risks and budgetary implications tied to the plan. You could move up the project completion date, but there will be more significant risks and very likely cost implications.

Let’s say that you decide to double outputs by adding a night shift to your project. This may compress your project (at a cost), but you aren’t necessarily going to double your speed or halve the length of time it will take to complete the project. There could be other factors that are creating bottlenecks that simply cannot be moved. 

Throwing more money and more resources at a project might not accelerate it. You must understand each element of the project. 

How to Answer the Dreaded Question

The next time you get asked the question, “Can you finish earlier?” answer with a question. “Are you willing to take on more risks and spend more money?” Suppose the answer to your question is yes. In that case, you can go through the deterministic schedule to find tasks that can be compressed with additional resources and funds (e.g., paying for express deliveries, switching vendors, paying overtime). 

Bear in mind that moving up a deadline means less time to problem-solve unexpected crises if they crop up. Project Managers usually have very valid (and scientific) reasons for setting deadlines and milestones at a specific pace. 

For more information about this question (and others), visit theomarproject.com or check out the podcast. The episode referenced also includes the question, “How to determine who does what?” during a project with a method for reducing redundancies in the organization.

To ask Omar a question directly, reach out here.