Of course, planning is one thing; delivering is another. If you’ve developed the plan properly, the key to bringing a project in on time is to monitor delivery of it carefully and stick to it as closely as possible.

Review the progress of activities against your plan regularly. At appropriate review points, confirm the validity of the plan and adjust it if necessary. Communicate success regularly to everyone in the project team, but don’t gloss over poor performance or lack of progress.

Keep team members and other stakeholders fully informed about progress and the achievement of significant milestones. Ensure that you keep on track and on budget.

Pause to reflect

Using that longstanding issue from the first exercise, create a basic cause and effect (fishbone) diagram for a project designed to achieve the outcome you’ve identified as the desired one. Identify the major factors that will stand in the way, or be the issues you will need to deal with in delivering on your objective. Now break down those categories into a series of causes. As this is an exercise, you don’t need to go too far with the branching to make it worthwhile.