If you were given a project deadline and limited resources, how would you complete the project successfully?

Align on clear requirements, identify dependencies and stakeholders, secure partner commits, track burndown, unblock teams, maintain risk inventory and key decision logs. Trade off between resource, time or scope. Example, we wanted to deliver for a pilot milestone with a hard deadline. The level of effort for the P0 requirements was very high requiring 4 SDEs for 3 sprints but we had only 2 SDE resources to work with. We revised and reprioritized the P0s with our product manager and delivered for the pilot in time. 

Establish SMART goals and KPIs for the project with sponsor and stakeholders. Prioritize requirements based on Reach, Impact, Confidence and Effort and drive consensus on the MVP. Refine the task breakdown and high confidence effort estimates. Develop a RAID log, communication plan and dashboards to track progress and KPIs with stake holders. Track and clearly report progress  up, down and sideways using an agreed reporting template with a clear executive summary and structured details. For example, I recently led a project where we launched a VR game from start to finish in working 10 days with establishing a clear MVP which the 2 developers were able to deliver on time while the original list of P0 items would have required 4 developers. We were able to adjust the requirements to achieve much higher reuse from a previous project and reduce the effort needed so the 2 developers could finish the task on time.

I’ll first review the project charter and project plan to identify the tasks with higher priority along with their dependencies. After that I’ll find if there is previous art that can be reused to speed up the execution of the project like work done by other teams at the company or open source.

After that I’ll identify potential risks, mitigate them and communicate them clearly to stakeholders and the teams contributing to the implementation to ensure alignment. During the execution of the project I’ll keep adjusting the execution plan as blockers are found, tasks become obsolete and new tasks are added.

Ensuring that tasks in the critical path and high priority ones are completed first allows for flexibility to still complete the project even when non critical functionality is moved to future projects.

When I was managing the flutter security program we had a deadline of two years to complete compliance with the SLSA security framework with two junior resources. The program required the development of secure infrastructure but instead of building everything with our resources the program was adjusted to work in collaboration with the chromium team implementing only the  Github integration and reusing Chromium infrastructure. Another challenge was that the resources working in the project were software engineers with minimal knowledge of security forcing a different approach for the program execution. Given the challenges we focused during the first 6 months on low hanging fruit that required mainly software engineering expertise while at the same time the resources were getting security expertise in collaboration with google security team and the open source security foundation. At the end the project was finished on time even when the project execution plan was very dynamic changing frequently based on the new learnings.

To handle a project with a tight deadline effectively, prioritize tasks based on their urgency and importance. Break the project into smaller, manageable segments, and focus on completing each one step by step. Ensure clear communication with your team, delegate tasks efficiently, and don’t hesitate to ask for help if needed. Stay focused, maintain a positive attitude, and remember to take short breaks to keep your energy levels high.

jira agile methods, prioritization, phase the must needed tasks and release that . 

put an effort estimate 

if I still can’t meet it, I would seek help from team members to see if we can get some folks to be loaner for our project and can temporarily chime in and contribute to the release 

Must define what is the scope of project, have a clear and useful gantt chart, allocate member to do multiple task without impact to critical path