The Money Files

Shrinking the next milestone

Making progress more visible

Resetting priorities with sponsors

Re-sequencing work to reduce friction

Giving the team a short-term win

Adjusting expectations, not just effort

1. Dates that assume uninterrupted focus

2. Risks that haven’t been touched since approval

3. Stakeholders who’ve changed role but not responsibility

4. Dependencies that are “assumed” rather than confirmed

5. Decisions parked “until later”

6. Reporting that no longer reflects how work actually flows

7. A plan no one refers to

So what do we do?

Fuzzy dates are dates that have a bit of wiggle room. They are approximate dates, placeholders, flexible time periods rather than a fixed date. For example, “week commencing 27 January” is a non-precise date, that offers some flexibility, and so is “Quarter 1”.

Why would you plan with fuzzy dates rather than precise dates? Precise dates can be better as they give more certainty, but sometimes you just don’t know. For example, if you are doing rolling wave planning, or any type of iterative planning, you might not have the right level of detail to commit to a fixed date at this point.

Managing risk

You might be dealing with a lot of risk, and fuzzy dates allow you to build risk into the schedule by giving yourself a relatively large window in which to complete the work, driven by unknown factors such as what the weather will be like and whether that will enable you to complete the work or not.

Using fuzzy dates can help reduce the risk of unrealistic scheduling by acknowledging potential unknowns early. You aren’t just guessing at what the risk will be or what impact it will have on the schedule, or hoping that you can hit the specific milestone. You’re building contingency into the schedule which helps keep the project timeline realistic when you can’t (yet) commit to specifics.

Probabilistic ranges and conditional dependencies

Sometimes, fuzzy dates are expressed as ranges (“2-4 weeks from now”) or probabilities (“likely to happen by the end of March”). That gives you an indicative time frame without a hard commitment, and I find it’s quite a good way to set expectations with stakeholders. You can always explain why you are presenting ranges instead of fixed dates.

One of the reasons that drives ranges is external dependencies (“The materials will arrive some time in the first half of February but the supplier doesn’t know exactly when…”). Another example is when you are waiting on feedback from either internal reviewers or external clients, and they haven’t committed to providing an exact date by which they will get back to you. A task might be due “two weeks after client approval,” where the actual start time depends on an external party.

Moving on from fuzzy dates

Of course, you can’t have everything as a fuzzy date, and there comes a time when you can switch out your ranges and vague commitments for something more concrete. Incrementally refine your project schedule and replace the fuzzy dates with specific dates as more information is known and your confidence levels improve.

Communicating fuzzy dates

In essence, fuzzy dates provide a way to communicate tentative timelines while keeping the schedule flexible and adaptable, making them valuable in early-stage planning or for projects with high uncertainty.

However, they are a pain to show on a schedule unless your scheduling tool allows for the presentation of earliest/latest completion dates. In one of my mentoring sessions recently we talked about using earliest/most realistic/latest date markers on a PowerPoint timeline or using a bar with gradient colours fading out at each end to show the ‘fuzzy’ part of the timeline.

Some software tools will display start and end dates with a range if you have these parameters set; others will only work with a specific date as the end date, which is why in the main the project managers I have spoken to tend to create another timeline (often on a slide) to show the concept. Or you just create a task that stretches out to the latest possible target date and use that, making the fuzziness opaque and avoiding talking about it at all.

How would you do it?

There’s a resource risk that should be on your project risk register, regardless of the type of project you are doing. That’s your bus factor. In other words, what risks are you running if a key resource is hit by a bus.

Yes, it’s a bit morbid (use “won the lottery and quit without notice” if you want a discussion point with less dying) but it’s a crucial issue for projects.

The resource doesn’t literally have to be hit by a bus (and let’s hope that they are not). What we’re talking about it is the impact of them not being on the team for a length of time, often with hardly any notice. For example, going off sick, deciding to take another job and HR putting them on gardening leave, needing time to care for a relative or some other absence.

The trouble with project teams is that we don’t normally have a lot of spare resources lying around. People are subject matter experts and you get one of those skilled experts allocated to your team based on need. It’s unlikely that you have a pool of multiskilled people who can step in if someone else is off work for a length of time…sometimes that might be the case, but even if the skills are available, the person who has them might be fully allocated to another project or even – gasp! – doing their day job.

Building resilience into the team is important, but in my experience it’s not often as easy as it sounds. Yes, we cross-skill team members where it makes sense. Yes, I cover for other project managers when they are on holiday for a week. But some tasks need The Person With The Skills and you have to wait for them to come back.

So, now we understand the risk that the bus factor brings to projects, what can you do about it?

First, highlight it in the risk register if you haven’t already. This improves visibility and lets senior managers know it’s a risk you’re carrying.

Next, talk to the team. They can’t predict this kind of ‘bus’ absence but you can get caught out by other types of absence. I once worked on a project where the key functional owner told me that she was on holiday for a fortnight during the project call before she went away. She had tasks scheduled for her to be doing while she was off. Her line manager hadn’t let me know, and to be fair to her, I hadn’t asked her either.

From then on, we regularly asked project team members when their upcoming holidays were, because you can’t always rely on them or their managers to let you know. Especially if the holiday is booked after the project schedule has been put together.

Talking to the team serves another purpose: it can help you identify what you can proactively do to offset the bus risk. For example, workshadowing, setting up a delegate with an account so two people have access to crucial systems, sending two people on training courses instead of one and so on.

Sketchplanations highlights the challenge in the image below. It’s up to you to make sure you’ve put enough measures in place to make sure your project isn’t delayed by unforeseen lack of resource.

Here in the Northern Hemisphere, we’re seeing the beginnings of a long-awaited summer. I seem to have been affected by the change in season this year more than ever before and I can’t tell you how glad I am to have longer, lighter evenings.

Image credit: ChatGPT

However, the summer days come with a different kind of challenge for project teams. I’d rather be in the garden redoing the rockery than behind my desk in a stuffy office, and I’m sure I’m not alone. How do we keep project teams engaged and productive during the summer months, when vacations and a general slowdown in business activity can impact momentum? And when our momentum might be waning as well?

Here are some tips to share with your team.

Flexible scheduling

Now is the time to be as flexible as possible with work arrangements, especially if your team is in a location where it’s only likely to get hotter (and they don’t have air conditioning). Maybe team members could start earlier or work later into the cooler evenings, taking a Spanish siesta-style approach to the working day.

Remote working is your friend – no one wants to be stuck in a tube or on the metro on a sweltering day.

Fill the slump

Many clients – and even internal customers – might be slowing down work requirements because their core team members are taking a summer vacation. If you’re finding the team with less to do at this time of year, use the slower period for training, team-building activities, or focusing on long-term strategic projects that require deeper thinking and planning.

Perhaps now is the time to get your PMP® certification or take the next professional development step in your career. Or simply organise a step-a-thon: we did one at work recently and the competitive factor was a great motivator for getting out at lunchtime (although most of my steps were done on the spot marching! Still, it all counts!). It was also a team challenge that we could all do independently and remotely.

Get mentoring

Have you thought about mentoring? Set up some mentorship pairings within the team or organisation. Summer slowdowns can provide the perfect timing for these relationships to develop without the pressure of project deadlines.

Carry out mid-year reviews

There’s still work to do, even if it seems like everyone else is out of the office! Schedule your mid-year reviews for the team, or if you don’t have direct reports, make the time to write recommendations and feedback for the colleagues you have worked with and send them to the relevant managers.

Health checks and audits

Not got a team to check in with? Why not check in on your projects instead?

Use any time you have to review the progress and health of ongoing projects. Identify any areas for improvement, risks you might have missed first time round, or changes needed. This could involve revisiting the project scope, timelines, and resource allocations. And most importantly, keeping your records up to date. Forgot to log that change? Do it now before someone asks you about it!

It might feel luxurious to have a slower period – and I know you might be reading this thinking, “What is this slowdown she is talking about?” I have felt that each year gets faster and faster, but I remember back to working in France when Paris emptied during August and I still feel certain industries and locations have seasonal ups and downs.

If summer isn’t your slower period, why not put these ideas to one side for year end or whenever your team has its slower point. They will still be worth doing then too.