One of the most common challenges for Project Managers and Engineering teams in new product development organizations is balancing the executive "time to market" mandate with good project estimation and risk analysis techniques.  Many a project has misfired after a CEO or top management group has boldly proclaimed to corporate stakeholders that, "Product X will be to market by (insert your aggressive date here).   

Common sense indicates that applying top-down estimation techniques and high-level persuasion to determine project delivery dates as a regular practice is foolhardy.  However, I will submit that there are at least a few circumstances where this approach is necessary and proper.  Now that I’ve properly offended Project Managers everywhere, let me at least make my case before you pass judgment and sentence me to Project Management jail.

  • A management team well attuned to rapidly emerging market forces might recognize an opportunity that can be leveraged for significant gain and competitive advantage if the organization acts quickly.  It is management’s prerogative and responsibility to identify and motivate the organization to act and seize these opportunities, even at the expense of order and business as usual.
  • An organization responding to competitor or technological disruption may be forced to abandon traditional offerings and practices in order to survive.  In these circumstances, a "shock" to the product/project system may be needed to spur action.
  • Product Development organizations are capable of becoming "comfortable" with a certain pace and well defined processes.  While these teams may feel good about optimizing their operational effectiveness, there may be little value creation accruing from incremental gains in productivity or quality.  Again, it is management’s prerogative to determine that changes and pace are needed.  A Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) may be just the thing to appropriately challenge the team to break out of their comfortable operating routine. 

While I would never advocate a management team dictating the schedule on a regular basis, it may be acceptable given any of the circumstances described above.  In the event that you as Project or Development Manager are on the receiving end of an executive-mandated delivery date, here are a few coping strategies:

1. Recognize and understand the circumstances driving the schedule mandate.  You don’t have to like or even agree with the approach, but it is your job to move quickly into problem-solving mode.  Active and passive resistance are destructive to your career and your company-avoid them once the time for debate has ended.  Your team(s) will watch your reaction closely, and your approach will have a profound impact on their attitude and morale.

2. Don’t give up the good project management practices that brought you this far.  Careful scoping, proper risk analysis and appropriate WBS and estimating approaches are still important.  Recognize however that you may have to break from traditional linear or sequential systems and do more in parallel or at least use phases to accelerate the processes.

3. Often when a project is deemed a strategic priority cost and/resource constraints may be relaxed or at least other, less important projects may be sidelined.  The moral is that you have executives that likely are willing to bend over backwards to help get you what you need. 

4. Depending upon your organization’s Project Management Maturity, you may need to consider adding outside help with expertise in project techniques that can help the team cope with a newfound need for speed and higher levels of up-front and future ambiguity.

5. An active and timely communication program is the project manager’s best friend during aggressive, fast-moving projects.  Know your stakeholders and keep them informed at the right level and with the right frequency. 

6. Celebrate incremental victories and popularize process and technology breakthroughs.  Success breeds success…just remember to keep it real.  Everyone recognizes false cheerleading. 

7.  Turn failures and mistakes into productive examples of "lessons-learned."  There will be mistakes made along the way.  Better to cultivate a culture that recognizes them as learning opportunities than a culture that keeps them buried in the detail. 

8.  Make certain that the Sponsor of the project is one of the executives mandating the aggressive delivery date.   This executive "skin in the game" is fair, proper and essential. 

The bottom-line:

As difficult as it is to deal with top-level mandates on the delivery of strategic priorities, this is reality and it is on occasion good and proper.  The wise Project Manager quickly develops context for the situation and moves from disagreement or resistance to problem solving.  Increasingly, an organization’s ability to learn and innovate is fundamental to survival and success.  The Project Manager can be a critical enabler of success by focusing on creating dynamic project management processes that maintain project integrity while supporting the need to innovate or accelerate.