FOCUS YOUR TIME AND MONEY Are You Deadline Serious?(A)(IBD 10 SECRETS TO SUCCESS)

Byline: Robin Grugal

7Start a project, and before you know it, it's grown into something bigger and far more complex than you ever imagined. That's not bad per se. But what company in this environment can really afford the extra time, cost and resources?

The solution, experts say, is to let time determine a project's scope.

Traditional thinking has us studying a situation, coming up with a plan and then determining how much time and resources will be needed to carry it out. But David Andrews, consultant and author of "Revolutionizing IT," suggests turning this logic around.

First decide how much time is appropriate. Then let that act as a constraint on the scope of the effort. This tack can be applied to almost any project, technical or otherwise.

Consider the time-constraint approach pioneered by DuPont Corp., called "Timebox Development." An absolutely firm completion date is set for each project approved -- usually 60 to 120 days out. If the project goes even a day past the deadline, it's canceled.

"This Draconian approach to strict schedule control has worked well in DuPont and numerous other organizations," Andrews said. "Not everyone who uses time boxes applies the death penalty to projects that go over schedule. Those organizations, including DuPont, that have such a rule on the books seem to rarely need to enforce it."