What if development period and costs were reduced?
If required to reduce the time frame by 10%, the budget should also be increased by 10% to balance all the conditions. For example, a competitor launches an important feature in three months, and your release will be at best in six months. If senior management decides to double output by closing tasks in the same 3 months, the budget should be increased not 2, but 4 times.
Management is always aware of manager’s attempts to double the time frame and costs for reinsurance. As a result, it can easily cut in half both a timeline and a budget, assuming that a manager has additional resources in store. There are several recommendations for negotiations: from the most open (continue «trading for resources») to the closed one (to use as many recourses as needed in advance).
It happens that a chief has already evaluated the project, but he takes his time reporting the assessment. The manager brings calculations to check, his chief simply shakes his head and says ‘no’, implying that the deadline is unacceptable and must be recalculated. As a result, a manager has to optimize plans until his chief accepts them. In this case, it is a manager who remains the initiator of such a calculation.
Head-office’s time is “expensive”, it has no opportunity to provide a detailed report. If head management has already devoted time to project discussing and agreed on the amount of investment in advance, the manager’s position is defensive or even avoiding: here is a tactic “to give a prior approval with subsequent adjustments in order to avoid unexpected and unpleasant interrogation.”
You can just admit that your product is losing the fight for the right to be the first to bring an important feature to the market. This works both in the B2C market (for example, short videos on social media were launched by several large players at once in 2020), and in the B2B market (fight for a tender, which victory promises an incredible profit). It forces a project manager not only to meet the competitor’s challenge but also to surpass it. In B2B sphere, there can also be a scenario where there is a struggle for one single customer, and this is not necessarily a war with a competitor.
It isn’t fair when a manager knows from the very beginning that the timeline and budget proposals are unrealistic, but agrees with them, hoping that by the time the backlog becomes obvious and it will be too late to change something. There is a sense of the significance and importance of a project in which has already been invested a lot of money, which makes it seem that it is easier and cheaper to finish it and get at least minimal profit.
Sometimes soft skills are the most decisive for a manager. Systematic work with adequate lead times, available information and documentation for all team members, respectful attitude to everyone — all this allows us to design complex solutions over a long time period.
