How do you manage “waiting” in projects?

Eduard Hernandez

Community Champion

Corporate Project Manager - Tech Transfer| Neuraxpharm Barcelona, Cataluña, Spain

My boss recently told me something that stuck with me: “I don’t pay people to wait" (it was not directed to me! :-)

And it made me think about how much waiting is built into project management: waiting for quotations, expert input, decisions, approvals, information from another team, or even responses to a simple email.

So, how do you, as a PM, deal with waiting? Have you developed a tactic or “hack” that helped you turn waiting time into productive time?

Posted: Aug 22, 2026 4:02 AM

Luis Branco CEO| Business Insight, Consultores de Gestão, Ldª Carcavelos, Lisboa, Portugal

A very relevant question.
I would distinguish between waiting that is inherent to the work and waiting that reveals how the work has been designed.

Some waiting is legitimate, such as external lead times, necessary analysis or proportionate assurance.
But repeated waiting for decisions, approvals, information or expertise may indicate unclear ownership, constrained capacity, fragmented information flows or decision rights that do not match operational needs.

So I would not focus only on keeping people productive while they wait.
That can make good use of unavoidable delay, but it can also normalize avoidable friction.

The more useful questions may be: What are we waiting for? Why? Who can influence it? What is the consequence of waiting, and when should we intervene or escalate?

Sometimes the most productive response to waiting is not finding more work to fill the time.
It is understanding why the waiting occurred and, where it is avoidable, reducing the probability that the same kind of waiting happens again.

Posted: Aug 22, 2026 5:10 AM

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How do you manage “waiting” in projects?

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