Digital projects have a terrible reputation of taking longer than planned time and budget. As a Project Sponsor, you must ensure that your project completes on time. When your project takes longer than the planned time, it can also suffer from other side effects.
The following are the few side effects of the delay in the project completion:
- Team morale: Project team members often work hard and long hours to ensure the project remains on track. They feel demoralised when the project completion deadline moves out apart from their best efforts.
- Momentum: Project extension brings in comfort due to additional available time. It often negatively impacts the momentum within the project and leads to further delay in the project tasks.
- Scope: When you allow more time, it is often an opportunity to add more scope to the project. The implementation of additional scope inturn requires additional resources, cost and time.
- Project cost: Due to the factors discussed above and the extension of the project timeline, Project cost goes up. The critical factor is the requirement of resources to support the project during the extended period.
- Changes in project team: Project teams and resources are pretty volatile. Do not be surprised if the vendor pulls in new resources. Contractors and employees can also decide to move on.
The bottom line is that the extension of project completion has much broader implications that the Sponsor must evaluate.
