Project Management - Be Flexible

Again, this is another truism that is thrown around so often these days that hardly has any meaning. However, it is also good advice. There will be different data that comes up from time to time that will challenge your team and may even force a major restructuring. Or perhaps someone isn’t working out like you have hoped.

Or a sudden illness takes your star player out of work for a couple weeks while she recovers. If your plan and the milestones that the team has set are too rigid, then you run the risk of rushing the work, resulting in stressed out people and likely even shoddy work. You will need a plan of course, but always leave room in that plan for the unexpected, because there will definitely be unexpected issues that will come up. Maybe your hard drive crashes, the rubber for some reason won’t hold the tread design you came up with, or the tire may be great on rain, but you were going for snow and ice. The bottom line is that there will be times when it is absolutely the right thing to change gears completely or even to totally scrap what you have been doing and start again from scratch.

An absolute insistence on trying to stay the course no matter what will actually hurt the project and often make you look foolish in the eyes of your co-workers and your boss.