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Project Acceleration In Project Management: 5 Methods + The Good & Bad

Nearly all projects go through this at some point – the schedule must be accelerated. After all, there are deadlines to meet, a pace to keep and stakeholders to please. When delays arise out of surprises, issues or performance problems, it’s only natural to start thinking about the schedule. When will this thing be done?? There are many ways to go out project acceleration, which we’ll discuss below. Each acceleration method does come with its’ own set of drawbacks and stipulations to be aware of. This article is all about project acceleration in project management: five methods of doing so, plus the good and the bad of each.

Project Acceleration In Project Management: 5 Methods

In this article, we’ll be exploring five methods that project managers can employ to achieve project acceleration:

Add More Resources
Increase Working Hours
Reallocate Resources From Other Tasks
Overlap Activities By Consolidating
Look For Inefficiencies & Address The Largest Ones

Let’s look into the good, bad and reality of each of these techniques!

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1. Add More Resources To Accelerate The Project

The most common way project managers accelerate their project’s schedule is by adding additional resources to the job. This is particularly common in the construction industry, but is applicable in many lines of work.

It makes sense. Five people can’t push a cart up a hill? How about six? Seven? By adding resources to a project, it’ll almost certainly accelerate the schedule.

But at what cost?

This is where adding resources can become an issue. Just like there are sometimes “too many cooks in the kitchen”, there are times when adding more resources becomes a moot point. Only so many people can hammer in nails, write code or dig a hole – after a certain point, the productivity per resource drops off significantly.

That’s why it’s very important to monitor productivity per resource when adding more. As project managers, we must always make sure that the juice is worth squeezing – production rates per added resource must stay constant. When they fall, you can most likely get rid of a few.

Here are a few types of situations when it makes sense to accelerate a schedule by adding resources:

The cost of NOT hitting a deadline or milestone exceeds the additional cost of adding resources.
There is a massive amount of work to be done that requires sheer volume of production to get done.
The added resource is a specialist such as a consultant or expert that will provide a lot of value for what you’re paying them.

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2. Achieve Project Acceleration Through Increasing Working Hours

Another way project managers shorten their project’s timeline is by extending the working hours of the project.

In construction, this can be done by paying workers overtime for longer hours each day, or by working weekends in addition to the normal work week. We will need to pay a premium for all of these additional hours that can be 1.5x or even 2x the normal hourly pay, so do this with caution!

In the industries of design or electronics, multiple teams may rotate on a shift-basis, so work can continue for many hours despite the crews being different. This is essentially what’s being done in item no. 1 above, although it’s technically the work hours that are extended.

While extending working hours is a great way to accelerate a project, there are a few drawbacks.

For one, people get tired. Staff that’s been working longer hours is more likely to make mistakes, perform at a slower pace and even get sick from a lowered immune system.

Also, having multiple rotating crews involved in the performance of work leaves the project more susceptible to errors (changing hands too much), and inconsistent quality.

Here are a few situations when extending working hours can healthily accelerate the project’s schedule:

Like no. 1, the cost of NOT hitting a deadline or milestone exceeds the additional cost of longer working hours.
There’s a seasonal deadline to hit that’s related to temperature, weather or daylight hours.
The extended hours are only needed for a short while, where burnout and productivity loss aren’t a risk.

3. Reallocate Resources From Other Tasks

On any project, there are tasks that are extremely important to the project’s outcome. These are known as items that fall on the critical path of the schedule. Then there are tasks that can wait – they’re non-urgent tasks that happen alongside the major ones. They have plenty of float – time they can be put off while still getting completed on time.

When entering a period of project acceleration, resources from non-critical work tasks can be reallocated to critical path items. This option is essentially the same as item no. 1 above (add resources), but the advantage of reallocation is that you aren’t technically adding resources, which means at the moment, your project isn’t taking on additional costs.

For example, the captain of a ship will call for “all hands on deck” when an urgent situation arises. They’re basically telling the crew to drop what they’re doing – a less urgent task at this moment – and come help with the emergency.

When you can reallocate resources instead of add them, it’s usually a money-saver. While all projects have their own unique circumstances, reallocating resources to accelerate the schedule is a good idea in the following scenarios:

Your project presently has resources working on tasks with a lot of float.
The budget is tight and there’s no margin for more resources.
There’s an urgent tasks that MUST be done as quickly as possible.

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4. Overlap Activities By Consolidating

If project acceleration is required on your project, consider overlapping activities. Also referred to as consolidating the schedule, overlapping activities allows more successive tasks to get done in less time.

There are plenty of examples of this in everyday life. The assembly line, for instance, is a perfect example of consolidating tasks on a massive scale. Each person or action in the assembly process works on one thing only. As soon as their step is complete, the product getting assembled is moved onto the next step. Previously, a worker would perform many tasks in the assembly of one unit.

In construction, many processes are staggered in this fashion to shorten timelines. A paving company will have one crew prepping the ground beneath the new road, with another crew following them that’s putting down crushed stone, and another crew behind them laying down asphalt. Physical space is a factor, though – having too many people working on top of one another is always problematic.

Generally speaking, it’s easier to consolidate unrelated tasks than it is to consolidate tasks that are linked to one another. If a task runs into trouble, all successor tasks will also have trouble. If these tasks are overlapped too much and the predecessor task runs into trouble, there will be a lot more to fix in the successor tasks, since more was completed while the tasks were overlapped.

5. Look For Inefficiencies & Address The Largest Ones

As they say, the easiest way to save money is to not spend it. The same can be said for a project’s budget and also for the project’s timeline. Project acceleration is a byproduct of remedying inefficiencies.

If we’re trying to save money out of our own pockets, we cut the cable bill, eat at home more often and buy things at bargain prices. If we’re trying to save money or time on a project, we can do the same.

In terms of saving time, it’s key to understand productivity and production rates on all of the work being performed. Are crews working productively? Are they producing the results that the project requires them to in any given day?

Whether your project involves design professionals, field crews or tech experts, you can ask them if there’s anything they need in order to work more efficiently. Sometimes the right piece of equipment or tweak in a routine will boost productivity a significant amount.

Similarly, are there any time-wasting activities going on? Do you see obvious room for improvement? Spending time monitoring the moment-to-moment production on a project is important on occasion in order to understand the typical day of the people working on it.

Addressing inefficiencies is a great practice for project managers at any point in the project, but is particularly useful during periods of schedule acceleration.

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In Summary

When projects need an extra boost to get done on time, project acceleration is a very common means to get there. Project acceleration in project management can be done in many ways, and you now have a solid understanding of five methods to do just that! I truly hope you’ve found this article helpful and informative. Thanks for reading!

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Acceleration, Construction Issues, CPM, Delays, Efficiency, Productivity, Project Scheduling

Pat Finnegan

Hello! I'm Patrick, the creator of PM Problems. I have an educational background in Civil Engineering and I've worked in the construction industry since 2008, working on many types of projects in that time. I love talking about project management as well as helping others learn and grow!

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Project Acceleration In Project Management: 5 Methods + The Good & Bad