How to Avoid and Overcome Project Delays

Unexpected delays are one of the most common problems in project management. In one survey, less than 50 percent of companies said they complete projects on schedule. Nearly half of project managers (46 percent) who responded to another survey said that meeting project deadlines were among their biggest challenges. Project delays seem to happen more often than not.

Here are some notable stats about project delays:

• 1-in-6 projects overshoot their schedule by 70%.
• For capital expenditure projects, even a 10% overrun can lead to a $5 million profitability loss.
• 25% of projects fail due to inaccurate task time estimates.
• Software projects have an average schedule overrun of 33%.
• A silver lining: 64% of projects with mature PM processes can be completed on schedule.

What causes project delays?

It is critical for the project manager to understand how project delays creep up while managing projects. Only then they could prevent them from happening or deal with them when they inadvertently occur.

Here are some of the most common causes for delays:

• Changes in project scope
• Resources become unavailable
• The project timeline is not planned properly
• Project objectives and deliverables are not realistic within the project constraint
• External vendors don’t deliver on time
• The communication between project stakeholders is not effective
• Unpredictable external changes like disasters

Impact of delays in project

If so many companies and project managers experience project delays, it can’t be that big a deal, right? Wrong. Project delays cause a whole host of issues, some of which might not be obvious right away.

Delays add to project costs. Every day you’re late is another day paying for personnel and other resources that weren’t factored into the budget. Time is money, after all. But there are other costs to consider.

Learn why project time management is essential in managing projects effectively.

Your company’s reputation with the customer and other stakeholders could be damaged, not to mention your reputation with your bosses. If your project is late, you may cause delays in other projects by tying up resources that are needed elsewhere. If the delay is extreme enough, the entire project collapses and leads to project failure.

6 ways to avoid project delays

Clearly, project delays are best avoided, but is that even possible? To a wide extent, yes. While you can’t prevent every delay, you can certainly take steps to keep your project on track and mitigate the damage from delays that do occur.

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1. Set realistic goals for your projects

Setting realistic goals is possibly the biggest factor in determining whether you’ll complete your project on time. Sometimes it’s tempting to set extremely ambitious goals, either to make a good impression or because the client expects it. Check out how project management tips can help you strategize projects effectively and efficiently.

Remember that it’s far better to underpromise and overdeliver than to overpromise and underdeliver. Good goals are realistic, clear, and measurable.

• Realistic– Can we accomplish this goal with the allotted time and resources available to us?
• Clear– Do we know exactly what is being asked of us? Does everyone understand?
• Measurable– Are there quantifiable indicators with which we can judge each goal?

2. Hold a team meeting

At the beginning of your project, gather your project team to communicate the vision for the project. Make sure everyone understands their roles as well as the purpose of the project as a whole. Highlight the key project milestones you’ve set in your project plan and explain the benchmarks for success.

Spend some time discussing the goals of the project and, if necessary, clarifying how they’ll be measured.

3. Gather the right resources

It’s difficult to overstate the importance of gathering the right resources. When it comes to financial resources, you’ve almost certainly been given a limited budget; evaluate whether the amount budgeted can truly cover the project costs and then make adjustments or secure additional funding at the outset.

Your most important resources are the people working with you on the project. Assess the composition of your team to see if you have enough people to get the project done on schedule and whether all those people have the necessary project management skills.

If not, you’ll need to update your project plan to factor in how much time and money it will cost to add team members, provide training, or outsource to cover the gaps.

Don’t neglect the material resources required for your project. Things like office space, computers, printers, and software are vital, and you can’t take for granted that they’ll be available.

4. Schedule carefully

A project schedule is more than a timetable. It’s a comprehensive document that details the project timeline and the organizational resources required to complete each task.

To create a project schedule, divide the project into

• individual tasks and activities,
• various phases of the project,
• determine project dependencies,
• sequence the activities, and
• estimate the required resources and duration of each task

with the help of a project scheduling tool. The schedule should be readily available to every member of the project team.

Project scheduling requires clarity on resource availability and timelines. Project management software like Kissflow Project can help provide that clarity. Sign up for a free trial today!

5. Track and measure progress

Data collection is crucial to project success. It’s important to set good goals, but it does little good if you don’t collect data in order to track and measure your project progress towards those goals so that it will increase transparency in projects.

You must have systems for tracking task completion, quality, and budget. Take account regularly to see if your team is on target.

6. Forecast

Forecasting in project management consists of taking stock of the current status of the project at a given point and extrapolating from the available data to predict results at the end of the project. At the beginning of the project, there’s not enough data to forecast with any accuracy, so forecasting should only be done once the project is at least 25% complete.

Forecasting takes project risks into account and can be cast in terms of time, cost, quality, or a combination of those factors. If your forecast shows you’re off target, you can often take the opportunity to course-correct before the project is delayed.

If you discover it’s too late to prevent a delay, there are steps you can take to mitigate the severity of the delay.

Bonus: Use of project management tools and techniques

The right project management tools that are best suited to your project team can help avoid project delays.

A good project management tool will help you

• plan your project in detail at the start,
• assign tasks to team members,
• proactively stay updated,
• and be aware of everyone’s workload.

As far as techniques go, depending on your team’s need, you can go with Agile, Kanban, or any of the many other project management methodologies available.

What to do when a project gets delayed?

No matter how well your project plan and project execution are done, unexpected delays will occasionally happen. Team members get sick, suppliers miss deadlines, and clients change project parameters. These things are beyond your control, but you determine how to respond to delays. Here’s what to do.

1. Hold a team meeting (again)

As soon as it becomes obvious your project will be delayed, gather your team to strategize. At this point, something has to be sacrificed. Either

• time
• money and/or
• project deliverables.

Establish how long it will take to complete the project with the delay and how much that will cost. Get a breakdown of what the delay will do to your budget.

Find out what your team is able to deliver by the original due date, staying within budget. Once the team has established what’s possible, you can update your client and present the new options.

2. Prioritize tasks

With your adjusted plan decided, you need to prioritize tasks with the help of Kanban boards. Reevaluate the original project plan you made and see what tasks have already been accomplished, which can be eliminated, and which may need to move up or down your team’s priority list.

3. Set new deadlines

If the best option for your project is to change the due date, set new deadlines for each of the tasks and benchmarks in your project plan. As discussed above, make sure the new deadlines are realistic given the delays you’ve experienced and the capacity of your team.

4. Communicate

Communicate, communicate, communicate! Keep your team informed of every delay, change of plans, and altered client expectations. By using task management in projects, every member of the team should be able to see when tasks are due and what major deadlines are approaching. Don’t forget to communicate with your clients as well.

They’re surely stressed by the delay (even if they’re to blame for it), and clear, reassuring communication from you will help ease minds and preserve business relationships.

With effective project communication, you can ensure that everyone stays on the same page and minimize delays due to misunderstandings.

Avoid project delays using project management software

If you’re a project manager relying on spreadsheets for projects and calendar alerts to keep your schedule and avoid delays, you’re probably pretty stressed. Using an online project management software can streamline your project management process, give visibility to your whole team, and help avoid costly delays.

A good project management tool should have kanban boards, to-do lists, task management, and collaboration tools. Start using Kissflow Project for free and see how it can help you avoid costly project delays.