Balancing Project Changes

How to balance a project that is

failing to meet its cost, time or
quality objectives.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
1
• Re-estimate the project.
– Double check your estimates to ensure
validity.
– Look for opportunities to do things better or
differently to achieve the same goals; just
don’t reduce cost or schedule estimates
blindly.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
2
• Add more people to your project.
– Only add people if people will actually help
get things done faster. Try to avoid “creative
conflict,” i.e., what happens when too many
personalities lock horns to the detriment of the
project.
– If you have already selected a good team,
change objectives instead of changing people
on your team.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
3
• Reduce the scope of the tasks.
– Can you scratch some of the work from the
project list?
– Would a downsized project be worth doing?
– Make sure stockholders agree to a
downsizing.
– Negotiate what you really need (more time,
resources, bigger budget) to get the project
done right.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
4
• Increase productivity by utilizing in-house
experts.
– Reassign people to meet original cost and
schedule performance.
– Make staff more productive by training people
or using new technologies or tools.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
5
• Use outside resources.
– Assign part of the project/outsource work to
an external team that can manage and
complete it within your original guidelines.
– Be aware, outsourcing can pose a risk of lost
in-house control.
– Also be sure the outsourcers can do the job
you expect of them.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
6
• Overtime!
– Be careful. Overtime can backfire in lost
productivity and moral problems.
– Using hourly employees instead of salaried
ones can end up busting the budget.
– Overtime should never become an expected,
default action.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
7
• Let the customer do some of the work.
– If the customer agrees, you should identify tasks that
the customer’s staff can perform.
• Customer must agree with plan
• Customer must have adequate resources to do the job
– Watch out for political fall-out from such a move. You
don’t want problems created between your
organization and the customer.
– Be sure to preserve the integrity of the project.
– Be sure to preserve the integrity of your authority as
project manager.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
8
• Crash the schedule!
– Compress the tasks on the critical path to
reduce the time required to meet the desired
finish date.
• Produce a cost/schedule/trade-off analysis.
• Be aware that increases in costs to get things done
quickly will outweigh the need for speed.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
9
• Adjust the project’s profit requirements.
– Reduced profit margins can free up cash for
needed resources.
– Remember, the decision to reduce profit
belongs to the company executives, not to the
project manager.
Basic Ways to Balance a Project-
10
• Adjust the project goals.
– You can always reduce some functionality or
scope.
• Remove functionality only when it doesn’t affect
overall product performance.
• Performance cuts can result in cost increases in
the long run due to reworking of product or
damage to firm’s reputation.
– Do NOT reduce the quality of the project or
the end results.