Maintaining Control During Project Execution 179And sometimes a simple “nudge” in the form of a reminder
(e.g., “Don’t forget you’re supposed to be done in two weeks”)
is all that’s required, if an issue is detected early enough. The
worst thing you can do is to ignore a situation, believing that
somehow the team will make up the lost time by the end of the
project. This simply won’t happen unless you make it. Problems
rarely work themselves out: you must take action to fix them.
Decide whether to fix the problem (immediate action) or
compensate for it (future action). When problems occur, we’re
often tempted to fix them immediately. However, in many situa-
tions, this will not be the right thing to do.
You can sometimes solve problems with immediate and
direct action. However, you cannot assume that this should
always be your first course of action. Many times, in fact, your
best course of action will be to deal with the present as well as
you can and look to counteract the effects of the problem
through future actions. If you choose to address the problem
Brad Learns a Lesson
In one of the project team meetings, Carol reports that soft-
ware coding is falling behind.
“It’s more difficult than I’d originally envisioned,” she says as she
gives Brad the bad news.
“That activity is supposed to be completed by the end of the
month, you know,” Brad notes, checking the schedule.“I’ll see if I can
get you some help, Carol.” He then moves on to the next agenda item
before Carol can respond to his suggestion.
The very next day, Brad gets a temporary programmer assigned and
feels confident that he’s resolved the problem.
In the next team meeting, Carol reports that she’s fallen even fur-
ther behind.
That’s a surprise for Brad.“What about the programmer I got for
you?”
“Sorry, Brad,” Carol says.“It took several days just to orient him to
Project Apex and what we’re trying to do with this program. He only
just started being productive a few days ago!”
“Well just finish up as soon as you can,” Brad says, having learned a
valuable lesson about “throwing bodies at problems.”