How to Manage a Project Block

Project blocks can occur during any phase of the development process.

Knowing how to handle project problems when they occur is the key to meeting deadlines and keeping your project development on track. Project blocks are any events, which delay progress on a project or prevent a project from developing according to the initial plan. Managing these surprises requires quick reaction that includes assessing the situation, developing a solution, managing deadline changes and regular reassessment as the project team works to solve the problem and keep the project progressing after the issue is resolved.

Instructions

1. Identify the issue blocking the success or progression of your project. Investigate the block, attempting to identify how it is keeping your project from progressing. Speak to the person or group who identified the problem, as well as any available experts familiar with the situation. For instance, if you are developing new software, and you lean that your program is losing information it should be saving, you can identify the problem as a software issue and discuss the problem with employees who specialize in data storage.

2. Reallocate project resources to confront and address the problem, including allocating additional employees to the problem area, making necessary systemic changes or redirecting resources to research alternate solutions to the problem. As an example, you may decide to move two additional software developers to focus on the data problem, while instructing your team to look into alternate database software solutions.

3. Make any necessary changes to the project deadlines. Speculate on the amount of time your changes will take to confront the issue by speaking to the team members focusing on the issue and determining the amount of addition time they require. Extend immediate deadlines by the amount of extra time your team needs. Extend your long-term deadlines by the same amount of time, unless you believe your team can make up for the lost time. For instance, if your development team estimates it can repair the data loss problem in a week, extend the deadline for your database development by a week, while increasing your final deadline to compensate for the redistribution of resources and project delays.

4. Communicate with the development team regularly while it works on your suggested changes, making sure it is progressing quickly enough to meet your new deadlines. If the solution does not repair the problem, consider other alternatives to solve the problem and rework your deadlines again. As an example, if your team is unable to make much progress on your data loss issue after three days, you may decide to transition to an alternate database system and add another week to the deadlines, to give your team time to develop the new database application.

References

• IT Managers Inbox: Project Management Problem-Solving Skills
• Quality Digest; Six Problem Solving Fundamentals; Craig Cochran