Speed up Project Delivery With These Three Steps

Delays and unforeseen changes in project scope can result in poor deadline adherence or failure of your project. While you can avoid many of these problems through diligent scheduling and monitoring of activities, you will encounter times when you need to speed up the delivery of your project.

Rather than cutting corners and reducing the quality of your project, speed up project delivery through the use of these three steps.

1. Automate Manual Processes to Speed up Project Delivery

Manual processes require time, and time is a luxury that is not often found when unnecessary delays or problems arise. Use project management software and business intelligence tools to increase the automation of your workflow.

Obviously, you cannot automate all processes, but all members of your project management team and labor force need to be able to access information as quickly as possible. As a result, you can lower the amount of work you have to oversee and spend more time on managing your schedule to complete your project at a faster pace.

2. Consider Staff Augmentation or Overtime When Necessary

In the course of your project, it can be difficult to increase the speed without increasing your available staff resources. Staff augmentation and overtime can help you complete a project faster by giving you access to trained, experienced individuals. This may include skilled workers and members of the project management team.

Staff augmentation represents an additional cost to your project. Use this tactic to speed up project delivery if staff can be outsourced at a lower cost than overtime or hiring more workers. Meanwhile, your staff may be available to work overtime, but you must not make overtime mandatory, which results in hostility and dissatisfaction.

3. Fast-Track Tasks and Activities Where Possible

Fast-tracking tasks and activities involves changes to project scope and how tasks are completed. Your existing schedule is likely based on sequential steps, but if you can alter the schedule to complete tasks parallel to each other, you can complete more work in a smaller time. Unfortunately, some tasks and activities cannot be completed through parallelization, and you will need to determine other ways to speed up the project.

In cases where parallelization is not possible, try to overlap projects as much as possible. For example, you can begin sequential activities several days before the completion of prior activities. You may also reduce the project scope where appropriate. However, changing the project scope should be a last resort to increasing the speed of your project delivery.

Your project will evolve from start to finish, and your deadline could easily be moved up. Yet, weather problems and other delays can leave project in danger of missing deadlines. However, you can speed up your project schedule and delivery by following these three steps. In fact, using these tactics when you do not need to speed up project delivery can enhance the productivity of the overall project.

Key Takeaway

• Automate any processes that can be successfully managed without your intervention.
• Expand your labor resources through staff augmentation or overtime.
• Use parallelization of work to get tasks and activities completed at the same time.