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Sometimes there are technical solutions that can help reduce the schedule. It may be possi-
ble to return to the assumptions generated during the estimation session. There may be an
implementation approach that can be revisited. For example, the team may have assumed
that a user interface would be built for a piece of the software, when it could instead be built
to run from the command line. Or it might have assumed it would have to build a feature to
address a need, when this component could instead be purchased off the shelf.
As a last resort, however, the project can be released in several phases. This requires the
project manager to revisit the project’s scope, which will have to be adjusted to allow for a
phased release: some features will have to be broken into phases, while others may be cut
out entirely. This requires that the project manager revise the vision and scope document
and go through its review process all over again (see Chapter 2). While this seems severe, it
is often the only way to deal with an otherwise unworkable situation in which the organiza-
tion expects the team to complete a project faster than it is possible for the team to build it.

Add Review Meetings to the Schedule
If a schedule is written down, put in a folder, and never looked at again, the project plan
may just as well have never been made. There is no reason to plan a project if that plan is
never consulted again, nor corrected when it proves to be incorrect. There is no project
plan that perfectly estimates every task; the only way the team members can improve
their planning skills is by learning from their mistakes. The way to ensure that this hap-
pens is to add regular review meetings to the schedule.
Progress reviews should be held regularly, both to keep track of whether the schedule is
accurate and to plan action if the project goes off course. If the team is already holding
weekly, biweekly, or monthly status meetings (see below), then these can also function as
progress reviews (as long as the specific details of the schedule are discussed at every
meeting). To make sure a status meeting functions as an effective schedule review, the
project manager must make sure that the agenda at every meeting includes a discussion of
whether the project is still on track. The project schedule serves as the agenda for this part
of the meeting. The project manager should go through each task that is currently in
progress and work with the team to determine the status of the task.

During the review, if the team discovers that a task is going to be late, the project manager
must find a way to deal with it in the schedule. In some cases, a late task may cause other
tasks to be delayed, though sometimes the delay can be absorbed in the schedule. For this
reason, it is important for the stakeholders to be present: if there are major problems, they
will know immediately and can help resolve them. The result of this meeting will usually be
an adjusted project schedule. However, sometimes delays will cause serious problems that
cannot be dealt with in the schedule. If a delay means that an unmovable deadline will be
missed, the team will either have to adjust the schedule to put in overtime, or it will have to
go back to the vision and scope document and scale back the scope of the project.
Milestone reviews are meetings that the project manager schedules in advance to coincide with
project events. The most common way for project managers to handle milestone reviews is
to schedule them to occur after the last task in a project phase (such as the end of design or

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