One of the most frequent issues in project management is unexpected delays. Less than 50% of businesses claimed to execute projects on time in one poll. Meeting project deadlines was cited as one of the top obstacles by nearly half (46%) of project managers who took part in the poll. Project delays appear to occur frequently.
- 70% of projects overrun their schedules.
- Even a 10% overrun on capital projects might result in a $5 million profit loss.
- Due to incorrect job time estimations, 25% of initiatives end in failure.
- The average schedule overrun for software projects is 33%.
- The good news is that 64% of projects with established PM procedures can be finished on time.
What Causes Project Delays?
Understanding how project delays develop is crucial for the project manager to have while overseeing projects. Only then would they be able to stop them from happening or handle them when they unintentionally do?
- Shifts in the project’s scope.
- Resources run out of stock.
- The project’s timetable is not well planned.
- Project constraints prevent project objectives and outputs from being feasible.
- Outside vendors fail to deliver on schedule.
- Ineffective communication exists amongst project stakeholders.
- Unexpected external events, such as disasters.
Impact of Delays in Project:
Project delays can’t be that significant if so many businesses and project managers encounter them, right? Wrong. Many problems are brought on by project delays, some of which may not be immediately apparent.
Project costs increase due to delays. Every day that you are late means that you must pay for staff and other resources that weren’t planned for in the budget. After all, time is money. Yet there are additional expenses to take into account.
Discover the benefits of project time management and how to handle projects efficiently.
In addition to your reputation with your superiors, your company’s reputation with customers and other stakeholders may suffer. By using resources that are required for other projects, you could cause delays in them if your project is delayed. If the delay is severe enough, the project fails and the entire endeavor fails.
6 Ways to Avoid Project Delays:
It is obviously ideal to prevent project delays, but is it even feasible? Indeed, in the broadest sense. Even while you can’t always avoid delays, you may take steps to keep your project on track and lessen the impact of those that do happen.
1. Set Realistic Goals for Your Projects:
The largest aspect in predicting whether you’ll finish your job on time is probably setting realistic goals. Setting wildly unrealistic goals can be tempting at times, either to make a good impression or because the client expects it. See how project management advice can assist you in developing successful and efficient project strategies.
Always keep in mind that it is much preferable to underpromise and deliver than to overpromise and deliver. Excellent goals are attainable, measurable, and practical.
- Realistic: Is it possible for us to achieve this goal in the specified time and with the resources at our disposal?
- Clear – Are the demands being made on us clear to us? Does everybody comprehend?
- Measurable – Are there tangible indications that allow us to evaluate each goal?
2. Hold a Team Meeting:
Get your project team together at the start of the project to share the vision. Ensure that everyone is aware of their responsibilities as well as the project’s overall goal. Identify the important project milestones you’ve established in your project plan and describe the success criteria.
Spend some time talking about the project’s objectives and, if necessary, outlining how they will be measured.
3. Gather the Right Resources:
The significance of assembling the appropriate resources cannot be overstated. You’ve probably been given a tight budget when it comes to financial resources. Determine whether the budgeted amount can actually cover the project expenditures before making any necessary adjustments or securing more money.
The people you are working on the project with are your most valuable resources. Examine your team’s makeup to see whether you have the required number of personnel and project management expertise to complete the project on time.
If not, you’ll need to adjust your project plan to account for how much it will need to fill the gaps by expanding the workforce, offering training, or outsourcing work.
Don’t overlook the tangible assets needed for your endeavor. You cannot assume that essential resources like office space, computers, printers, and software will always be available.
4. Schedule Carefully:
It goes beyond a timetable to a project schedule. It is a thorough document that includes information on the project schedule and the organizational resources needed to finish each task.
Divide the job into manageable chunks to build a schedule.
- Individual projects and actions.
- Different stages of the project.
- Find the dependencies for the project.
- Place the tasks in order, and then calculate the resources and time needed for each one.
Utilizing a project scheduling tool every member of the project team has to have easy access to the schedule.
Clarity regarding resource availability and timetables is necessary for project scheduling. Such clarity can be helped to deliver by project management tools like Arisen Project. Get a free trial today by registering!
5. Track and Measure Progress:
For a project to succeed, data collecting is essential. Setting strong goals is crucial, but they are useless if you don’t gather data to monitor and evaluate your project’s progress towards them. This will boost project transparency.
Systems for monitoring work completion, quality, and budget are necessary. Check in frequently to make sure your team is on track.
6. Forecast:
In project management, forecasting entails assessing the project’s current state at a particular moment and extrapolating from the information at hand to forecast results for the project’s conclusion. Forecasting shouldn’t be done until the project is at least 25% complete because there isn’t enough data to do so at the beginning of the project.
Forecasting can be done in terms of time, cost, quality, or a combination of those elements while taking project risks into account. You can frequently use the opportunity to course-correct if your prediction indicates that you are off course before the project is delayed.
