When Employees Miss Deadlines
February 5th, 2003 by HalWhen employees miss deadlines…look for failures in the system. Author, speaker and consultant Aubrey Daniels answers a reader's question about missing deadlines on software development projects. Daniels claims when an organization is missing commitments look to the architect of the organization — management. He goes on to say, "If employees frequently miss deadlines or rush around at the last minute to make them…the consequences for meeting deadlines are at fault."
- Look instead at how you set deadlines,
- How you respond to people when they meet them, and
- How you respond when they don't.
Daniels goes on,
The first is to assume success and plan how you're going to act when the employees are successful. What are you going to do and what are you going to say? The second is to have a way to see progress along the way. Put a large graph in the work area where everyone involved can see it every day. If you can track progress such as percent completion on a daily basis, you'll get a better result than if you graph it only weekly.
I only take issue with what to measure. Don't measure the typical percent completion. Instead, measure tasks completed (done-done) as planned. Otherwise, nice article.
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