How To Set Realistic Deadlines When Everything Is Changing All The Time

If the question "when will we be able to launch?” makes you feel like a deer in headlights, you're likely finding it difficult to set (and stick to) realistic deadlines.

With the number of task management systems and project management tools out there, you might think all you have to do is load in your project plan, assign the work and deadlines, and let the team do their thing (and if you’re an experienced project manager, you probably just laughed out loud).

Here's why setting realistic deadlines is important and how to do it right so you can deliver projects on time and keep your clients and stakeholders happy.

Why Is it Important To Set Realistic Deadlines?

Setting deadlines is essential to project success for many reasons, not the least of which is delivering on commitments.

• In an agency setting, projects are sold based on projected team capacity. Pushing things a day or two here and there usually doesn’t have a long-term negative effect, but extending timelines by weeks or months can mess up timelines for other work that relies on those team members.
• This is not unlike in-house project work. Say you’re managing a new website launch. You tell the communications team the site will go live three months after your kickoff meeting. Then, a stakeholder adds some new features one month in. Now, you’re looking at five or six months to launch. You need to reallocate resources to accommodate the new end date.

These examples illustrate how not setting timelines can devastate project teams and the entire organization, but you might also find yourself in a situation where an unrealistic project deadline is imposed on the team by a client or stakeholder.

Is the project managing you?

Sign up to get weekly insights, tips, and other helpful content from digital project management experts.

Your email*

This field is hidden when viewing the form

Consent

Yes, I want to sign up to receive regular emails filled with tips, expert insights, and more to build my PM practice.

By submitting you agree to receive occasional emails and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time. Protected by reCAPTCHA; Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Comments

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

How To Set Realistic Deadlines: The Textbook Version

If you’ve done any PM training, you’ve probably spent lots of time learning to estimate realistic task time frames. This might be using a top-down estimation technique, a bottom-up estimation technique, or an analogous estimation process.

For example, let’s say you’re estimating the time it will take to design a homepage for a new website. If you've used a time tracker, you know that, in the past, it’s taken your designer:

• 6 hours to mock up an initial design
• 1 hour for the internal team to review it (designer, developer, project manager, creative director)
• 1 hour to present it to a client or stakeholders
• 2 hours to make revisions 
• 1 hour for internal review 
• 1 hour to re-review with the client 
• 2 hours to finalize the design and package for development 
• 1 hour for handoff between design and development 

How many days should you estimate for this process in your project planning instructions? Let's say you decide on two weeks based on your current data. How does that look? Break down the project tasks as follows:

Week 1

• Monday/Tuesday: mock-up initial design
• Wednesday: internal review
• Thursday: client or stakeholder review
• Friday: client or stakeholder feedback

Week 2

• Monday: revisions
• Tuesday: internal review
• Wednesday: client or stakeholder review
• Thursday: client or stakeholder feedback
• Friday: final revisions, package files, and hand off to dev

If the above timeframe feels too aggressive, you can add padding to the timeline and stretch this to two and a half or three weeks. This is useful in situations where you know your stakeholders will have a lot of feedback and your designer won’t be able to turn around revisions on such a tight timeline.

While it doesn’t look like too many hours to fit in that timeframe, you might want to add some buffer time proactively so that work doesn’t drag on and upset your entire schedule.

How To Set Realistic Deadlines: The Real-World Version

It’s time for a healthy dose of reality. You must learn to read between the lines when running a successful project with realistic deadlines.

Consider the scenario outlined above—you need to account for the people doing the work. If you have a designer who procrastinates or lacks deadline management skills, create a sense of urgency to get things done. The more you know about your team's habits, the easier it is to set realistic deadlines.

Another essential consideration are the unknowns or X factors. These fall outside the scope of typical project planning or estimating, but can profoundly impact the timeline and your ability to set realistic deadlines.

Think about it: When you’re asked to set up a project schedule, tasks, and due dates at the project’s kickoff, you might not know very much about the project’s specifics and the stakeholders involved. As the project unfolds, you'll get much more accurate in setting realistic project work deadlines.

Examples of unknowns or X-factors that can impact deadlines and project timelines include:

• New stakeholders coming into a project at the eleventh hour
• Extreme weather and global pandemics
• Mass layoffs or reductions in force
• New technology or sunsetting of current technology for integrations or dependencies

How To Know It’s Time To Change A Deadline

If you need to change a deadline, be proactive. For example, if you’re working on a website and it’s scheduled to launch on a specific day that lines up with other marketing activities (a news release, media planned coverage, or a campaign launch), these activities must happen in the correct order.

In this scenario, the site should be launched a few days before the marketing campaign kicks off. That way, there's time to work out any final kinks or address any bugs. But we all know how it goes: a late kickoff or delayed approvals along the way can push us to really tighten up timelines.

If it looks like the project is way behind schedule and you're coming up to the launch date, it’s probably a good idea to coordinate with stakeholders to either speed things up, prioritize what is needed for launch day, or move the deadline.

Have frequent check-ins to take the temperature of the team and keep an eye on the project’s progress.

Pro tip:

You may want to do this in smaller groups without the more senior stakeholders to get the team to be really honest with you about the amount of time they need to hit their milestones.

How do you know whether to pressure the team to meet the deadlines or start moving things around? There are some subtle (and not-so-subtle) signs that it’s time to conduct project deadline management and re-align your schedule with more realistic deadlines. These include:

• Work being blocked because dependent tasks are incomplete
• The project scope has changed and the timeline never accounted for additional work
• The team is beginning to feel stressed
• There are increased risks associated with rushing through tasks
• Additional requirements have been exposed
• Significant bugs or quality issues have been brought to light 

If you’re still unsure about whether or not a deadline around time needs to be adjusted, create a contingency plan with your team members. Ask them to try to meet the original deadline, but come up with a checkpoint (well before the actual deadline) to assess progress and make the final decision.

That way, you enable the team to complete the work as quickly as possible but you're still providing a safety net in case they need one.

What's Next?

Learn more about how to set realistic deadlines by checking out our course offerings in the DPM School.