Delegating When Project Timelines are Unclear

Ever felt pushed into a corner on a project? A leader in your organization comes to you and says “I want you and the team to work on this new project. I don’t have all the details – but let’s just get started on it.”

SkillPath trainer and leadership coach Russ Genzmer suggests responding with caution to this downside pressure.  A project manager’s job is to successfully complete a project on time to the agreed objectives. 

“Getting pushed into a corner that shortchanges the definition or plan stages of a project jeopardizes that.” If a project manager doesn’t handle these first two stages properly, research shows it significantly increases the chance of project failure, impacting timeliness, costs and utilization of resources.

“Now, you can’t very well tell that leader ‘no’,” Genzmer admits. “But you also can’t risk a project failure. When that happens, no one’s going to remember the pressure you faced to ‘just get started’.” 

This is where another key part of a project manager’s role comes in. And that’s managing people’s expectations, Genzmer says. Before you can start making assignments and delegating to your team, you need details. 

3 foundational blocks of all projects: 

1. Information

• What are the project specs?
• What are the requirements?
• What will the project do when it’s complete? 

2. Resources

• Does my team have the right skills or do they need training?
• Do we have the right tools?
• Do I have enough or the right people to get the project done?

3. Timeline

• Start date
• End date
• Series of milestone dates to use as checks and balances

When a project comes to you with little or no information, Genzmer suggests responding by saying something like: “Ok, I’m going to slot this into the tentative 2026 project list.” Doing this means you haven’t said “no.” But you’re also not going to give it to your team just yet. 

Pushing for more information

Before you can do that, you need information. To get it, reach back to that leader and say “To get this project slotted in with a start date, I need a little more information. When can you and your staff sit down with my team to define the project goals and objectives so we can better understand what you want?” 

After that information gathering meeting, you’ll be able to take a closer look at resource needs and a tentative timeline. An experienced person or two on your team should be able to start a high-level estimate of the time needs. 

Using this time estimate as a starting point, consider both optimistic and pessimistic scenarios as well as the risk of something unexpected happening to derail the project. For consistency, Genzmer has always relied on his own formula that factors in these things and adds an objective element to the overall time estimate. 

Once you have this estimate, add contingency time to allow for the unexpected, and go back to the leader with your time estimate. If they push for a tighter timeframe, reach back to your team to see where adjustments might be possible. Once you’ve reached agreement, you’ll be able to build a timeline with start and end dates as well as checkpoints to help keep the project on schedule.

It’s not uncommon for project managers to feel pressured into starting a project with little or no information. Experienced project managers know this puts both their reputation and the project at risk. Before committing to start, gather the information you need so you’re able to create a realistic timeline and successfully hand the project off to the team.

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