Managing By Deadlines

When working in project environment, you act in a non-isolated environment. You have many different departments and teams. You don’t act alone. Even if you deliver some of your own tasks on time, many other tasks have dependency on others or their deliverables. This means if they are late, you will be late as well. So how to deal with that?

I provide deadlines taking into consideration some small buffer in case someone is late. For example: “Hi Alex! Could you please provide information on how many hours you will be available for the project this month? I need this information by Friday September 28th. Thank you!”. If this information is important, I can add a reminder in my calendar to keep an eye on that and follow up if not done.

See, if you just ask without deadline, your request may seem as not important, can be missed or reply may be provided in 2-3 weeks or never. You may even forget yourself about this query.

I see this approach work in practice very well and I believe it helps to manage better.