Managing Uncertainty in Higher Ed

• 02/01/21

• No clear delegation — the team doesn't know who is working on what;
• Resources are shared across multiple managers — true availability is guessed, not known; and
• Employees overcommit themselves, and can't deliver as promised.

Without a way to track this information, you have no insight into where project bottlenecks are — or how you can solve them with available resources. The solution is functionality in newer project management tools known as resource leveling. Rather than relying on a process, these tools consider availability and use automation to identify under/over-capacity resources and automatically redistribute based on availability. This helps ensure that projects keep marching toward delivery, despite fluctuations in resources.

2) Planning for Uncertainty

As we discussed previously, uncertainty is a given in any project. The only thing we know for sure is that the unexpected will occur. However, acknowledging this challenge is not the same as effectively managing it. When you tie your team to a specific deadline, one small delay can ruin the entire project and lead to cost overrun. Projects are built entirely around assumptions — in other words, guesses. We estimate how much our team can accomplish in a given amount of time, struggling to allow for some discrepancies but inevitably failing to predict all the challenges that will arise. People are notoriously bad at estimating efficiency. 

Even if you seek input from the delivering team, workers often underestimate their timelines because they don't want to disappoint project stakeholders, or they overestimate the ease with which they can complete the tasks. Other times they're just wildly optimistic. This "glass half full" mentality results in missed deadlines because of unanticipated delays or project schedules that almost immediately become out-of-date. This quickly turns the dynamic from one of excitement to one of stress and anxiety.

Newer project management tools bring automation to play to forecast scheduling and adjust timelines based on the system's changes. This sort of predictive scheduling uses integrated time tracking programmatically to refresh estimates and schedules for greater project timeline accuracy. A "high-confidence" estimate is provided, along with best- and worst-case plan estimates to allow for better preparation in the face of uncertainty, thereby mitigating risk. For those that aren't leveraging a tool or system for their planning, the same idea can be accomplished by setting delivery "windows" instead of set dates. Planning in phases can allow for flexibility as the initiative proceeds and builds team confidence, while still allowing for some unexpected challenges.

No project manager or tool can hit every delivery date with 100 percent certainty. However, by making subtle tweaks to your project timeline, you can empower your institution and set teams up for success, while still producing for your students, staff and community.