Staying on Track
Read this section on project execution and keeping resources on track throughout the project life cycle.
Staying on track
The single biggest problem for a project during the execution phase of the project is staying on
track. Despite all the best planning, having the best team and anticipating all the possible pitfalls
projects seem to have a knack of developing unforeseen problems.
The Myth of Completion
There is a common falsehood about tasks which is promoted by project tools such as Microsoft
Project. The myth is that tasks can be partially complete, i.e. a task can be 10% or 20% done.
If a task is thought of as a goal then the lie becomes obvious – either you have achieved your goal
or you have not. It’s a black-and-white, binary proposition. If your goal is a vague and imprecise
statement of intent, like "write some instructional documentation", then it is complete the
moment you start. As soon as you put pen to paper you have "written some instructional
documentation".
On the other hand if the task is well defined and has a measurable deliverable then the goal is not
achieved until it is delivered. For example: "complete a user guide and a technical manual". This
task definition is much more useful because it has a clear measure of success. The only time the
task is complete is when the documents are written, have been reviewed and edited and are ready
for publication. You are finished when there are no more changes to be made and you can move
on.
The danger in believing that tasks can be partially completed is that it gives you a false sense of
security. Because 50% of a task can be such a hard thing to define, people will tell you they have
completed 50% of the task when they are 50% of the way through the time allocated to it. It might
be the case that 90% of the task remains but they will insist that since there is 50% of the time left
there must be only half of the work left, too.
This misconception is particular entertained by those people who believe that time is elastic. That
is that you can cram any amount of work into a particular length of time, it just depends on how
hard you work. These are the people that will tell you one of two things:
- After working 10 days on a 20-day task they announce that they have only done 10% (i.e. nothing but 10% sounds better) and that they will make up the time. This is despite the fact that they fought tooth-and-nail in the first place to get 20 days allocated to the task. Truth be told they are simply rolling their delays from one task into the next and picking up speed as they accelerate through the project towards non-delivery.
- The second case is that they report good progress all the way through the first 15 days of a 20
day task and then their progress slows down so that on successive days they go from 95%
complete to 96%. They will certainly overrun their task and be claiming three weeks later that
the last 1% of the task is nearly done. The old adage of the "first half of a task takes 90% of the
time and the other half of the task takes the remaining 90% of the time" is all too often true.
Source: Nick Jenkins, https://learn.saylor.org/pluginfile.php/5749279/mod_page/content/2/BUS402-1.5-projectPrimer-CCBYNCSA.pdf
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