Time – we measure so many things by it. Miles or kilometres per hour, revolutions per minute, dollars per day. Time governs so much of what we do and it’s the one resource we can’t ever stop expending. The march of time continues regardless.
In business, it’s rarely money that presents us with the biggest barrier to success, it’s time. Time is the killer resource. We need that software release, that big deal, that important new senior hire to start as quickly as humanly possible. It’s never soon enough. And what happens, to make things even worse? Things always take longer to come to fruition than we hoped: pipeline is sluggish, deals slip, development is delayed. These are complex things we do in business, with many variables. Throw in the human element and you have a recipe for stuff not turning out as you planned.
To combat the ravages of time on your precious schedule, I offer these two seemingly contradictory pieces of advice. Firstly, wherever you can, build slack into your planning, so you have room to manoeuvre and still be on time. Secondly, don’t let work or what your doing simply fill the time available (much easier said than done).
It’s a fine balance, but isn’t everything that’s worth doing well?
I always liked Hofstadter’s Law, which I think applies here. It states that everything always takes longer than you think it will take, even if you take Hofstadter’s Law into account. In manufacturing, where I work, my biggest problem is planning production in such a way that delivery-dates are met, but the factory guys will generally ‘fill’ any time-space you allow them, despite the bonus I incentives to do otherwise. It’s the pits, man!
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Thanks for your comment Andy! You’ve hit the nail on the head. Have you considered giving your factory guys delivery dates which are earlier than what you’ve promised the customer, but are still reasonable?
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Hi Paul, Interesting idea. Unfortunately at present the work-planning software (not tool) we use to programme production, in order to work correctly for all those who see it and use it, needs to be the actual planned date it’s required. To do the thing you’re suggesting I’d need to ‘lie’ to the factory and have them see a different version of the planning system than I see. Managing that, along with the ‘correct’ version may be more difficult than the long run. I’m going to give it some thought though! There are about 5 million different books on the subject too. If you know of any good ones, let me know… 😉
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I will Andy, and thanks for commenting!
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