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Under Promise and Over Deliver vs Over Promise and Under Deliver

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Which one is best?  As Harry Hill would say "There is only one way to find out......Fight!"  Under Promise and Over Deliver My initial reaction when I write this is the first, it feels like expectation management 101, by setting a position to stakeholders that you will complete a project on day X knowing that you have some time in the bag or at budget Y with again some financial room to maneuver you are able to delight the sponsor. Right? On the face of it, it seems that this is logical, but there is a little niggle in the back of my mind saying caution.  Whilst done with the right intentions in mind could this backfire?   What if the organisation has limited funds to complete projects?  Your additional budget wriggle room you have created that you think you won't need means that another critical project is not initiated, or worse cancelled partway through with already sunk costs.  Or your safe date means that another project dependent on your

Under promise, over deliver vs. Over promise, under deliver

Under promise, under deliver vs. Over promise, under deliver which one is better there is only one way to find out............FIGHT. Stakeholder management and setting expectations of customers is always a minefield, I have seen differing approaches adopted and they tend to be extremes. The sales guy trying to win the new piece of business tends to over play the poisitives and is willing to take bigger risks. In contrast you have the delivery team being risk averse focussing on how difficult the project is. Both of them are wrong in my view. Fundamentally as a project manager we need to be honest to ourselves and to our stakeholders, if we catch ourselves thinking, we should be able to do that but have no clue how to then say so. Don't operate on a wing and a prayer. If we think just to be safe lets add in a bunch of contingency, then challenge ourselves to think "How have I calculated that? What is the unknown element and have I thought about the assumptions and quantif

Project Management Resources

I have created a new page on the blog which will list resources for all project managers, be they new to it or experienced. The links are to things that I have benefited from and hope you do too.  If by doing so I help one PM find something that will make the next stakeholder meeting a little less tense or the words for the next project update simpler then I am happy. I will add to this list over time but if you have a recommendation just add a comment to this post or drop me a mail. Here is the link http://thesundaylunchproject.blogspot.com/p/other-project-management-sitesblogs.html All the best and I hope you find it useful.