The Fast Projects Process
The Traditional Project Process
- The boss / stakeholders / powers-that-be give the team an unreasonable deadline / impossible mission.
- The impossible mission is regarded as having come from god.
- The team produces a plan showing that the impossible mission can’t be achieved.
- The powers-that-be insist on it anyway.
- The team says ‘Ok’ and (sometimes / quite often / but not always) delivers the project after many, many late nights, weekends, nasty surprises and general all-round grief.
The Traditional Project Process – but this time with added ETP
ETP is Fast Projects’ sister company. Founded by Fergus in 1992, ETP made some significant changes to this process:
- The boss / stakeholders / powers-that-be give the team an unreasonable deadline / impossible mission.
- The impossible mission is treated as being like a letter to Santa Claus i.e. it as a wish.
- The team produces a plan showing that the impossible mission can’t be achieved. In addition, it comes up with other versions of the plan which try to get as close to delivering the original wish as possible.
- The powers-that-be are only allowed to pick one of these versions.
- The team delivers the project on target, meeting the original commitments to the stakeholders.
The Fast Projects Process
- The boss / stakeholders / powers-that-be give the team an unreasonable deadline / impossible mission.
- The impossible mission is treated as being like a letter to Santa Claus i.e. it as a wish.
- The team produces a shortened plan. This is done by planning at the day level of detail thus making every day count. The project cannot be done any quicker than this. In almost all cases, this plan meets (and often exceeds) stakeholders’ wishes.
- The team delivers the project to this plan.
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