5 Useful Tips on Avoiding Project Delays

CPM Scheduling January 28, 2022

1,075 3 minutes read

Avoiding Project Delays

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Delay in a project could mean it’s a failure. No project manager would want to delay a project, because it puts a big question mark on his skills, reputation, and portfolio. When you are working on a project you are always asked to act proactively, update everything on time, and stop considering the actual deadline, though try to consider an earlier date for a deadline.

All these things are said to a project manager just to make sure that he works on things at a fast pace and does not let anything be delayed.

Not paying enough attention on activities and tasks could lead to delay in projects, and thus, its failure.
There are various techniques used for keeping a project manager informed of all the activities, tasks, and timelines of the project.

A project manager who keeps a close eye and focus on these things is likely to complete the project within time. Here are a few techniques that a project manager could apply to avoid delays in a project:

1. Managing Resources

Resources could be managed easily with the help of certain techniques that put all the resources in front of the project manager clearly. There are various techniques used for managing the resources properly so you can make the best use of your resources in the most critical tasks.

For example, if you have a critical task delayed because of the lack of resources, you would want to manage the resources to make up for the shortage. Remember, critical tasks and activities delay the project directly so to avoid the delay in project you need to have these activities managed right away.

2. Managing Project Activities

Use the critical path method to manage the activities properly. First of all you will need to make a list of all the activities that are involved in your project and then you have to plot them in a particular order and sequence to know which ones are the most critical ones. The critical activities should be performed at higher priority. Furthermore, activities that have many others waiting for their completion to start should be completed first so you are left with only the activities that don’t delay other activities in the project.

3. Managing Project Timelines

The project manager should take help from the professionals and experts to know what will be the estimated timelines for various tasks and activities. You have to look at the calendar and manage your timelines by taking into considerations the most important factors that affect the timelines – the weather. Even political conditions in a country could be a big factor in changing and affecting the timelines of your activities.

4. Proper Project Reporting

Reporting is integral in project management. If you are not being reported of the project’s status regularly, you might not know which direction your project is heading. You need to know what your resources are, how well are they performing, the status of activities, and many other things. Looking at the project reports regularly will keep informing you of where everything is heading to. Your planning for the project entirely depends on these reports.

5. Using Modern Project Technology

It would be wrong to miss out the modern technology when talking about things that could actually prevent your project from delaying. Modern technology saves you time and the hassle which you had to go through in the conventional reporting and techniques.

Through modern technology you are able to get a more thorough look of your project, and even the people who are not trained on scheduling and plotting data on tables could easily identify the conflicts and short comings in the project.

There are hundreds and thousands of software programs automating the process of reporting, resource management, activities scheduling and many other aspects of project management. It wouldn’t be wrong to say that modern project management is much more well-informed than old methods.