Getting Promoted: How to work within the project schedule and not despite it

The biggest complaint I hear when helping to boost performance in the workplace centers around the unreasonable expectations regarding around aggressive or impossible project deadlines. What I aim to do in this article is to help present projects in a better light so there is an appreciation, an understanding...and if possible? An opportunity to help you succeed where others simply throw their hands up in frustration!  

So to start, let's get something out of the way: all your project management will ever want to know is when you will have it done. Always. Every single conversation will most likely end with, “Give us a date when you will have it completed.” From that point forward? The date you gave will be used as the hammer to which your tasks will be seen as the nails.

Wait! In giving a date, it was only a best guess! It was never really a promise, right? Even worse, the ‘it’ you are going to deliver on said date isn’t even completely defined! You made the guess without everything needed to make an intelligent estimate of the real work!

I can hug you all. Then buy you a drink. You’ve just passed through the looking glass to real-world project management, and I am sure it was not a very pleasant experience. Unfortunately this will be your career, so (please) get used to it, and try not to react emotionally when held to your SWAG (Scientific Wild-Ass Guess).

As they say, “Don’t blame the player, blame the game.” Your project manager is not the enemy. She is juggling 100 other proposed dates and deliveries against a very tight timeline and a lot of pressure to bring it live and on budget. Chances are she wrote down your not-well-defined-best-guess delivery date and moved on to the next meeting, praying you will make your SWAG along with 400 other SWAGs that should have been completed last week.

So what can you do? Glad you asked!

Build a workflow framework. It’s very simple and only requires a spreadsheet and some well-spent time.

A basic example will list in the first column all the deliverables you are expected to complete, along with a breakdown of each step in the adjacent column to the right.

When you have what looks like a decent list of all the things you need to get done? Put a time estimate in hours to the right column for each task.

From there, you can build out the framework any which way that helps you manage your workflow, adding important bits of information as needed to aid you in your best guesstimate.

There are two very good reasons why a framework helps your projects. First, it communicates the details that are often missing from estimates; namely those loosely defined high-level tasks you put together that are now etched in stone. Second, as you discover the issues and risks in your efforts, along with a squeezed timeline that demands a more compressed delivery? You can easily demonstrate the impact to your overall work.

There is also a really good third reason, and this one is the dark horse of all reasons, because it will catapult you into a more visible leadership position: Work Delegation. This shows who is doing what, in correct sequence, with dependencies, and given enough time in a day? How all these tasks should complete within the team. 

If there are conflicts? You can easily show the picture and ask for advice on how to best resolve the situation. Without your framework and the delegation of your date-driven tasks? You will only have yourself, which puts pressure to communicate clearly and persistently all your issues and risks, which can be a very difficult and stressful burden to carry, especially if no one can spare the time to understand and address them!  

If this situation sounds like the perfect mess waiting to happen? Then you are very correct in your assumption! Instead, give them a picture (workflow framework) to follow and continue to communicate to that continuously updated picture. This alone will give you the opportunity to help the project and allows you access to participate in solving problems, which in turn gives you the right visibility as a problem solver and not a problem promoter.

Projects may still hobble along with incorrect tasks and unrealistic dates, but at the very least? You are working to help illuminate and give opportunity for change. In the end, you will most likely be held to your SWAG, but for future reference? You can now better predict your SWAG estimates moving forward along with all the risks to build awareness and trust. 

In sum, your overworked project manager will appreciate your input and ongoing problem solving...even if that appreciation is through a stressed 2-second smile while she quickly gathers up her notes, folds her notebook and rushes off to another 3 back-to-back meetings before working into the night to deliver a comprehensive status report for an all-hands stakeholder meeting tomorrow morning at 8am sharp!