Managing deadlines on long-term projects can be a tricky task: far-off deadlines don’t seem real, and imminent daily deadlines don’t seem to move the project along. The head of London’s planning committee for the 2012 Summer Olympics argues that measuring far-off events in weeks helps to keep projects on track.
Picture by Darren Lewis
Speaking at the Business Travel Market event in London last week, the chief executive of London’s Olympics organising committee noted that the start date of July 27 2012 for the London Olympics was one of the world’s most fixed deadlines:
Most projects have a deadline, but few have one which is accepted as immovable.
Deighton said that his primary measure for when the games would happen was that there were “57 more Thursdays” to go:
I use weeks because it’s big enough to feel you can still get stuff done, but they tick over fast enough to give you that sense of urgency.
For long-term projects, that’s definitely a concept worth considering.
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