December 5, 2006 - Management by Procrastination Part 3

Now we have a prioritized list. Has procrastination paid off yet? Actually, it has. By taking the time for prioritization you have made it clear to the stakeholders that the complete wish list can not be tackled. That means some of them fall under the 90% category and we can continue to the next step.

Deliver. We’ve narrowed it down to the hypothetical 10% you can’t avoid. Put the tasks into the schedule and assign resources. These tasks will take away from your team’s productivity and impact the delivery dates so they need to be tracked. Placing them into the schedule shows that impact.

Then do the work. It sounds simple, but if you have committed to it and your stakeholders are expecting it, you better get it done.

Track the progress to completion. Treat them like other tasks in your plan by collecting status and time reporting to see the continued effect on the schedule.

Finally, announce completion of the significant items. This loop back builds the stakeholders’ confidence in both the process and the team.

So don’t put it off any longer. Begin procrastinating today.

December 4, 2006 - Management by Procrastination Part 2

So far it may look like procrastination has only brought us more work. We’ve taken time away from other things to create a list. How has that done anything for us? If you consider for a moment you will see that the list made everyone admit they asked for something more than what we agreed to. That probably caused things to immediately fall off the list as unimportant. In addition, as a project manager you have allowed your team to continue their work uninterrupted as you take the second step.

Prioritize. Once you have created the list determine which ones are most important. There are several ways to assign the priority. The simplest is to ask the key stakeholders which three are on the top and then work those into the schedule. This is obviously subjective but is practical. On the other end of the spectrum is taking the time to rank each one based on set criteria. Some examples of criteria that could be used include:

Return on Investment (ROI). Determine which additional items give you the biggest bang for the buck and focus on those. This requires additional work to define the cost, savings, profit and impact to the schedule for each task.

Functionality vs. Extra. If an item is necessary to make the system function better it is more important than the bells and whistles. Features that fail the functionality test can be added in the future.

Ease of Implementation. More complex tasks are going to eat away the time your resources have to complete the project. These items can be moved to the bottom of the list, effectively procrastinating them to phase 2.

However you decide which ones should be added to the project, make sure you follow your change management process. If additional budget or duration is required, get the commitment from your sponsor before moving forward.

December 1, 2006 - Management by Procrastination Part 1

Management by Procrastination is alive and well in project management. My theory is that 90% of non-scope items that you are asked to do will be changed, dropped or done by someone else before you can get to it. The trick is to figure out which items make up the other 10% and do them. I’ve written a chant you can practice quietly to yourself while sitting in another boring meeting to promote this management technique:
Procrastinate, Procrastinate
Put it off until it’s late
S-T-A-L-L
Stutter, stop……wait

All right, so there isn’t much science behind my theory but there are real results from procrastination. When tasked with activities tacked on to your project, the key is to identify, prioritize and deliver.

Identify is more than merely taking note of anything that someone suggests you do. First confirm that what you heard is what they said. Second, make sure you are the one they are asking to do it. Finally, put it in writing for review and approval. “Approval” in different settings means different things. It could range from verbal to email confirmation to wet signatures. Choose appropriately.

So to identify the real tasks the questions you should ask are: (1) Did you just say what I think you said?” (2) “Are you talkin’ to me?!?!?” (3) “Could you please sign here…and here…initial here…and thumbprint there?”