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How to avoid the last minute scramble

Have you experienced the last minute scramble?

You are trying to complete a project, or get ready for an audit, and a large proportion of the tasks are completed just before the end. That's the scramble.

All those days / weeks / months you originally had available to you didn't count for anything.

This kind of experience is known as the hockey stick effect:


The red line shows the hockey stick. Last minute productivity. There are good arguments for working this way, allowing the effort to be concentrated so you can do other things beforehand. However, mistakes, stress and delays are more likely in my experience.

The green line is your planned activity. Regular activity and output throughout the life of your project / process management. This is easier to manage and takes away the problems listed above for last minute frenetic action.

The orange line, however, is a proactive front loaded approach. If you have the capacity, why not pull ahead the activities and ensure decisions are being made? Possibly utopia for many of us but an option to consider if you aren't as stretched as usual.

So, how do you avoid the last minute scramble?

How about these ideas?
  • Introduce milestones to help the team gauge their output.
  • Make progress visible to all, to help with accountability.
  • Use a weekly meeting to check on process status / project task completion.
  • Use a red / amber / green traffic light system to show whether the activity is on track.
If the above is a serious concern for you, check out my online course:


The course guides to you build a management system that ensures high levels of consistent on time delivery, without the stress of last minute activity. I've also included a 30 day email coaching course and templates to help you implement the ideas even if you are short on time.


But, in the meantime, take a look at how you are delivering and see if you can make progress more visible so that you can stop ending up with the last minute scramble!

Giles
About the author:

Giles Johnston is a Chartered Engineer who specialises in helping businesses to grow and improve through better business processes and embracing Kaizen.

Giles is also the author of Effective Root Cause Analysis and 'What Does Good Look Like?'.

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