OVERVIEW

A lot of issue management revolves around focusing on having the proper issue and risk
logs in place. But what about the human side of the equation? The reality is that a big delay or
setback on a project is demotivating to the people working on it, and it can cause tensions on
your team to run high.

So, what can you do at this point to effectively manage a project team? What steps can
you take to motivate your team and help them stay productive once you've experienced a
massive delay, issue, or setback?

Project delays can cause a number of problems for the Project Manager to deal with, including:

* Scheduling conflicts *Delayed payments

*Cascading impacts to other projects *Late delivery penalties

*Opportunity costs

There are several reasons why a project may be delayed, including:

*Bad weather *Equipment problems

*Late material deliveries *Troubleshooting

*Personnel availability

SOLUTION

There are three techniques to pull a delayed project timeline back on track in order to resolve
project timeline delays:

1. Fast-tracking is a technique where activities that would have been performed

sequentially using the original schedule are performed in parallel. In other words, fast tracking a
project means the activities are worked on simultaneously instead of waiting for each piece to be
completed separately. But fast tracking can only be applied if the activities in question can
actually be overlapped.
 Although fast tracking may not result in an increase in the cost, it leads to an increase in
the risk, because activities now being performed in parallel may lead to needing to rework or
rearrange the project. And, reworking the project can cause the project to lose even more time.

2. Crashing is the technique to use when fast tracking has not saved enough time on the
project schedule. With this technique, resources are added to the project for the least cost
possible. Cost and schedule tradeoffs are analyzed to determine how to obtain the greatest
amount of compression for the least incremental cost.

Crashing analyzes and categorizes activities based on the lowest crash cost per unit time,
allowing the team working the project to identify the activities that will be able to deliver the
most value at the least incremental cost. Crashing only works if the additional resources will
actually achieve completing the project sooner.

3. “De-scoping” process allows you to get a list of separated activities that are required for
achieving project objectives and deliverables, and you can keep track of any issues related each
separate activity. Here is what you need to do:

o List your deliverables, so you will see what results your project must deliver
o Prioritize the deliverables against the project objectives
o Then communicate such a comparison to your project sponsor in order to ask the
sponsor to remove any deliverables that are not on line with the objectives

After these two steps are done, you receive each deliverable and respective
objective and then you can track what activity is needed to meet this objective and
produce this deliverable.

Each of these techniques has its pros and cons, and there are several things to consider
when using any or all of these techniques. However, you should be able to utilize one or more of
these techniques on a delayed project to pull its timeline back on track, enabling you to finish the
project on-time, make your customer happy, avoid scheduling conflicts, avoid opportunity costs,
avoid cash flow issues, and avoid late delivery penalties.