Tight deadlines
Question: Give some examples of why project deadlines might be tight
(Move your mouse pointer over the icons for suggested reasons)
Crashing the critical path
Reduce duration of tasks on the critical path
- more staff
- but Brook's law ("The Mythical Man-month", 1975, Addison Wesley)
- paid overtime
- risk - what will you do if things worsen?
- contract programmers or sub-contract work
Bear in mind that crashing the critical path can result in a
new critical path
Other ways to shorten the critical path
Reconsider dependencies to concertina the critical path
Trim the scope
- Can the customer do without the bells and whistles?
Phase the implementation
- the customer might be happy to take only part of the system
by the "deadline" while you work on the rest for later
implementation
- e.g. archive routines, end-year reports
Other topics