The TimeWise Approach ...

Everybody wants their projects finished faster, cheaper and more reliably. This seems like an impossible dream for most companies and nobody said it would be easy. But there are things you can do to stretch "time" for your project.

For example, every day counts in a project - especially the ones at the beginning - the so-called "fuzzy front end". Often, there is no hurry in the start phase of a project when only a few people are kicking around ideas. The weeks fly past - weeks that are sorely needed at the end of the project when 30 developers are fighting the clock to be ready in time.

Another example is de-scoping unnecessary tasks at the beginning rather than the end of your project. How often have you discovered that all the complex, nice-to-have features are 80% completed and will take an extra 3 months. The business then decides to do without them but it is now more work to remove them than complete them. So you are stuck with the 3 month delay. Postponing the nice-to-haves at the beginning is easy and they can always be added back if you have extra time available!

And why do companies always try to do everything at once. Allocating your IT staff to 10 projects at once just means that 10 things will not be completed. Allowing people to focus on the top priority first means that at least your most important projects will be ready on time. The others, that have no resources, would not have been delivered anyway.

These examples are all common sense but it is surprising how often common sense is forgotten in the IT world of new trends, techniques and tools. Why be impressed by the newest buzzwords? - why not learn from your own previous experiences and apply TimeWise common sense to your projects?

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