Any project manager understands what we are talking about: the time limitations which are given, internally or externally, for the accomplishments of specific tasks. In one word: deadlines.
As much as human nature struggles with boundaries and restrictions, deadlines are the main part of our job and, despite some of us might not like it, they are strongly supporting the work of project managers, sometimes they are real lifesavers.
Managing a set of actions and different actors involved in their execution requires time frames and limits in order to timely accomplish the tasks, thus enabling the upcoming activities to be implemented. Deadlines contribute to addressing deeds at the best time in which they have been planned since delays might place them in external conditions which do not allow their smooth and effective implementation. For example, a pilot testing activity to be done with students at school, due to a delivery delay, cannot happen during the summer, and this ends up being a serious problem for the proper project timing.
Being very clear on the periods in which specific elements need to happen will not only be consistent with the initial plan but will also avoid delays in payment, frustration among partners of the consortium, decrease of motivation, annoyance towards those who might be pointed as the ones responsible for the delay. Addressing deadlines helps to give the right working frame and rhythm to tasks and deliveries thus positively affecting the atmosphere of the partnership and the sense of accomplishment which, in general, is the positive engine of working teams.
Deadlines work as a pedagogical tool for professionals, even the ones which lack organisational skills because they represent an external agent which forces anyone to be on time and to deliver according to the expectations. If time limitations are constantly overcome some internal/personal training is suggestable. Sometimes, however, the delays and the consequent shifting of time limits are since third parties do not deliver what will enable us to do our proper job, thus putting us in the position not to respect deadlines. This is when any time limit becomes frustrating.
A wise project manager knows how to set deadlines: they shall aim for the high so to strengthen the sense of attainment so to assure value for money and impact to the project. At the same time, they shall be very realistic and reachable so as not to induce exasperation due to the lack of achievement. Demanding but attainable, inspirational but achievable, this could be the golden rule.
Having said that, we also agree that sometimes deadlines fixed during a working plan shall allow a deviation. This “transgression” needs to be functional to the project delivery and the accomplishment of tasks and not simply justified by slowness or lack of delivery on the side of a project actor. Changes in plans are healthy when they deal with the management of real risks in delivering the project, or when dealing with any type of emergency event during implementation. In this case, overcoming already fixed time restrains helps keep the project going and realising all that expected though on a different time frame. The ongoing experience of the pandemic affecting project implementation has made it mandatory to reconsider the initial deadlines for delivery of tasks and, in many cases, has forced consortia to consider prorogation of termination time as necessary. All EU-related agencies have welcomed this need as a force majeure matter and coherently activated protocols to postpone initially agreed deadlines.
The last thought refers to the deadlines of project submission, which are – in some cases – the real reason for the race against time, therefore harbinger of some anxiety and pressure. Here delays or transgressions are not allowed because once the online platform closes there is no way to deliver our proposals. This forces the project designer to well plan all the necessary activities so as to reach, possibly ahead of time, the moment of submission preventing any glitch which the digital platform might reserve at the very last moment. Think of the last time when the executive agency of a program has postponed the deadline of project submission for which you felt being late; didn’t you feel somehow relieved?