It’s the end of the year, and the focus for your team might be more on the holidays than on completing your project work. In fact, project deceleration – where progress on the project work slows down – can happen at any time, not just year end. Here’s what to do if you think it’s happening on your project.

1. Notice it is happening

The first thing to do is to notice that your project actually has a problem. You should be tracking project progress regularly and if you do that you’ll be able to see that work isn’t getting completed by your scheduled completion dates.
You could use more complicated methods to identify deceleration but gut feel works too: when you’ve missed several delivery dates and you’re noticing a slippage across all tasks (not just one that has turned out to be more complicated than expected) then your rate of work is decelerating.

2. Identify the cause

Now you know you have a problem it’s time to think about why this might be happening. There could be any number of reasons but some common ones are:


  • Project is lacking executive attention
  • Project team have higher priority work to do on other initiatives
  • No push from project sponsor or project manager to keep work ticking over
  • Lip service being paid to how important this work is.

3. Keep the team motivated

One of the main reasons that work tails off and projects decelerate is that the team loses focus and motivation. Even if that isn’t the root cause it is often a symptom of a deeper problem: who wants to work on a project that the executives don’t care about? I can see that would be a demotivating situation.
So, how are you going to keep the team in high spirits? They need to feel that their work is valued and that someone appreciates what they are doing. If the project sponsor isn’t very good at showing this then you’ve got two options:

  1. Do it on their behalf
  2. Encourage your sponsor to act the part and motivate the team, explaining how their lack of involvement is negatively impacting team morale.

Some sponsors simply aren’t very good at sponsoring projects, although they may feel passionately about the benefits that your work is bringing. You’ll have to judge the best ways to keep the team motivated so that the work can get back on track.

4. Reset your goals

In this step you reiterate the work that has been completed and explain how it helps the company achieve its overall goals. You can then explain how the project tasks going forward support those initiatives. Essentially, you are kicking off your project again with renewed motivation and a focus on completing the work to achieve the deliverables.
Doing this face-to-face, with your sponsor in attendance, is the best way to invigorate the team and get everyone on the same page again.

5. Replan

You are behind your schedule. There is very little chance that you’ll make that time up, so you’ll have to reset your timetable around the deliverables that are required and what’s achievable in the time you have left (if you cannot extend the timeframe). You can use your second kick off meeting to review outstanding work with a tool like Seavus Project Viewer and replan as a team – this exercise is more effective than you replanning alone as it requires individuals on the team to buy in to the new published dates.
Replan your project to take account of any slippage. Set a new baseline and get it approved. Then you’ve got a clear, achievable plan to work to and you can start holding yourself and your team accountable to that.