NFIB

What to Do When a Deadline Can't Be Met
07/ 05/ 2002

A conscientious small business owner meets most deadlines. But even with the best intentions, responsible planning, overtime and lost sleep, some deadlines will be missed. In today's Workshop, Jeffrey Moses suggests steps to take when you realize that you're behind schedule and may miss an established deadline.

1. Determine the specific cause or causes of the delay. Are the problems labor-related (i.e., illness or understaffing)? Were you depending on the delivery of information, products or services that did not arrive on time? Did one phase of the project take more time than anticipated, although all other phases have proceeded on schedule? Was the time initially allotted for the entire project unrealistic?

2. Immediately determine all solutions to the problems and review the ramifications on budget and schedule. Always consider an extension of the project deadline. In most cases, it's better to produce high-quality work than to meet an impossible deadline. If an extension is not feasible, all solutions should be reviewed in light of potentially compromising the quality of finished work.

3. The customer should be contacted immediately. Inform them of the delay, the reasons and all considered solutions. Many times, customers have built added time into the deadline, so an extension will be acceptable. Missing a deadline may or may not be serious--but not informing your customer as far in advance as possible risks courting disaster.

4. Usually, accelerating the work schedule is the most practical solution. When completion depends entirely on employees, a manager has the most flexibility in accelerating the schedule. In such cases, additional employees can be brought in or work schedules can be increased. Labor costs, of course, will also increase, and responsibility for these costs must be determined based on whether you or the customer underestimated time requirements.

When a project depends on timely outside information or product delivery, a manager has reduced flexibility to accelerate the work schedule. All relevant parties should be notified of the impending delay, in an attempt to speed up delivery. Again, increased costs may result--and there is always the possibility that delivery cannot be made on time.

While it's not always possible to determine in advance all the potential sources for delay, an objective view of each stage before initiating the project may reveal likely problems. Being overly critical during planning runs the risk of burdening the project with too many rigid guidelines and approval requirements. Being too loose with planning may open the door for unforeseen delays. In any case, hard and fast deadlines inevitably run the risk of being missed. For this reason, each stage of a project should be allotted extra time for completion whenever possible. Then, as the initial stages are completed on schedule, larger and more potentially damaging delays later in the project will be covered.

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