Challenges

The most successful projects run just like a relay race, with the goal to complete each project as fast as possible.  When a person has a task in front of them to do (or has the baton), he/she completes the work as fast as possible and hands off to the next person who’s fully prepared to do the same until the project is complete on time, with full scope and high quality.

In real life, however, this is rarely the case even as the pressure to deliver more projects faster has never been greater. While every multi-project environment has its unique issues, there are many common challenges, such as:

• Project durations are too long
• Due dates are frequently missed or the scope is reduced to meet the due date
• Difficulty knowing the true status of a project (i.e. finding out that the 90% of the work is left with 10% of the time remaining)
• Budgets are overrun
• Needed resources are frequently not available or stretched thin
• Project complexity is increasing
• Internal or external customer requirements change frequently

Causes

There are a number of faulty assumptions that lead to these issues.  Examples of some of these are: believing that the sooner we start a project, the sooner it will finish; we can plan projects without taking into account resource contention; uncertainty is controllable; an idle resource is always a waste; and it is important to finish all tasks ‘on time’ if a project is to finish on time.

Results

We utilize the most advanced solution known today, Critical Chain Project Management, to challenge these faulty assumptions and effectively synchronize the efforts of all project resources across the organization’s portfolio of projects to achieve:

• Greater than 25% reduction in each project’s lead time
• 25%+ more projects completed with the same resources
• 95%+ projects completed on time with the original specifications and budget
• Objective resource decisions
• Early warning systems when projects are in danger of missing due dates
• Very high employee morale

Together, these benefits can give an organization a decisive competitive advantage in the marketplace and allow them to significantly increase the number of on-time, on-budget, and in-scope projects without adding additional resources.