3 quick ways to complete your project on time
No date is more crucial to the value of your brand than a deadline. Whether you hit it or you miss it, your clients’ perspective on what you offer them and how you stack up against your competition will change.
And the differences between performing or not are stark. The top 5% of project-based organizations at the pinnacle of collaborative and portfolio excellence delivered 91% of the projects on-time last year. By contrast, only 66% of the projects delivered by the bottom 55% came in on time.
With that in mind, here are three quick areas of focus that can help you manage process and hit that delivery date.
1. Right scheduling
Setting your projects’ lifecycle isn’t always up to you. Client needs and market forces can certainly determine deadlines more than you might prefer. Regardless, you can and should establish well-validated methods for setting appropriate scope and timing for your projects, and in the process, set yourself up for success.
While it’s of utmost importance to please clients, unreasonable expectations will only harm you in the long run. Instead, keep bigger goals in mind like long-term client success and satisfaction. Not just a “when do you need it” mentality. Use project histories and fully integrated software solutions like Project Service Automation (PSA) to more accurately and reasonably forecast a project’s time and resource needs.
A solution like Microsoft Dynamics 365 for Project Service Automation can help establish a repeatable and predictable project-based service model with process automation and data accuracy for on-time, on-budget project delivery. It can also auto-assign resources to specific jobs based on schedule, skills, proficiency, location, or region.
2. Agility in process
PSA software solutions also offer the advantage of real-time, full integration of data across a project’s team members and lifecycle. This is indispensable because as projects progress, change is inevitable. Your process needs to be able to remain agile and fluid to compensate in a timely manner.
Real-time information and collaborative tools that provide team-wide visibility and interaction enable the kind of decision making that can be the deciding factor on whether or not a project comes in on time and on budget.
3. Postmortem
It is all too tempting, once a project is completed, to move on without looking back. After all, the next opportunity beckons. But fair and critical post-completion evaluation of processes is how growth-oriented organizations build on success and correct pain points.
Create an abbreviated scorecard for key projects that allows team members to collaboratively evaluate what worked well and what needs improvement. Consider letter grades or numbered scores, anonymous input or casual in-person discussions, whatever works best for your team. And make sure to seek the input of key managers on the project lifecycle and processes.
The other important number
Hitting your project delivery date is crucial, as we’ve discussed, but another important number hinges on the ability of your team to effectively schedule, adapt and evaluate—the bottom line. Organizations that have aligned people, process and technology to enable collaborative experiences across sales, project service teams and the customer achieve greater than 65% improvement in year-over-year revenue.
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