Procrastination Causes Slippage

Project slippage is one of the main causes of failure.  We work so hard on planning out our project schedule, and then end up behind.  How does it happen?  Procrastination is one major cause.  If we have a project and we estimate that we are going to take two weeks to complete a task, but we know it will only take one week to do, we have a tendancy to procrastinate that first week.  Then you start the task and you hit a snag.  Someone gets sick, or a resource is on vacation.  Then you fall behind schedule.  This impacts everything else down the line.  Before you know it, your project has slipped.

Fighting procrastination is exceedingly important in project management.  Especially during the first portion of a long project.  If you start slipping at the beginning, everything else is affected and the problem just compiles.  By the end of a six month project you are three weeks late because of your one week of procrastination.

So how do we fight it?  We all know that we are going to procrastinate to some extent.  We know that we are going to run into sick developers, vacation times, missing resources, and the unexpected. (Like wild unicorns running down the aisles.)  So we need to plan for those items.  If it is a small project and I am VERY confident of the time line, I will estimate 25% of the tasks will be late, 50% will be on time, and 25% of the tasks will be early.  Then I will add a 10% buffer for the unicorns.

If it is a long project, spread over several years, I will break the project into years and estimate time for each year.  For the first year I will estimate 30% of the tasks will be late, 50% will be on time, and 20% will be early.  Then I will add in 10% for zombie attacks.  For the second year I will estimate 40% of the tasks will be late, 40% will be on time, and 20% will be early.  Then I will add 10% as a buffer for water buffalo stampedes.  For every year after that, I will estimate 50% of the tasks will be late, 40% of the tasks will be on time, and 10% will be early.  Then add a 10% buffer for sea monsters.

This formula has worked for me over the past 15 years and I don't really see any reason to change it.  Of course, as time goes out, it could change.  I haven't been on any projects that take more than 3 year to implement, so that is unknown territory.  There lies dragons.

And just what are the unicorns, zombies, sea monsters, and dragons?  They are equipment malfunctions, staff shortages, people leaving and coming onto the project at unexpected times.  Vacations will overlap.  Budgets will get cut.  Babies will come along, and marriages will happen.  All of these things are the unknown critters that affect project slippage and eat up that 10% buffer that we build in.  The longer your project goes on, the more critters you encounter.  So don't forget to give the critters their due.  Your projects will be more accurate and timely if you do.