How will you handle a delay in your first milestone?

Question

Anonymous · Accepted Answer

First and foremost I would ensure to keep relevant stakeholders engaged with
constant communication on the reason why I failed to reach the milestone. I
would also apologize for the same and communicate a timeline when I would be
able to deliver the same. Secondly, I would do a root cause analysis on why I
failed to deliver the milestone and based on the issue, I would get the relevant
resources to address the problem. If it is out of my team's control, I would
communicate with the relevant team to see to it that we work across the two
functional teams to solve the problem.

Anonymous · Answer

I think the most probable thing to do is to find out the Root cause of the
delay. To check which area of work did not turn out to be well . Once we know
the root cause, the next step being what suitable measures, we could think of to
make sure we take the preventive steps to avoid any such delay in future, One
such scenario I could think about in my project  is,  client coming up with a
feature change at a very later stage of sprint end. At this moment of time ,
when we are close to the sprint release,  possible measures , we thought of
 discussing on the action items with the engineers and come up with suitable
time line or if we could take the feature as an intermediate hotfix after the
current release, so that the current release is not blocked.

Anonymous · Answer

As a TPM, I would make sure that all the stakeholders involved including the
sponsor of the project or the program is informed about this delay and also I'll
have a data backed discussion with them. I will try to understand why there was
a delay. I would do a root cause analysis and provide a clear visibility to the
stakeholders involved on what caused the delay. Then I would work with the team
on understanding and mitigating this issue once the root cause is identified, I
would not behave as a gatekeeper but rather a partner who would help team to
identify and assign the right resource to fix the issue and if it's any cross
functional dependency then sync the other team and identify the right resource
who can help us with fixing the issue. Also I'll communicate with the leadership
or program sponsor including key stakeholder after I have a clear discussion
with my team on how much time it would take and why, so everybody is on same
page. Also, to make sure we don't end up with similar problem in future, I'll
make sure I document this properly on what was the issue and how it was
mitigated.

Anonymous · Answer

As a program manager it is important that I perform my due diligence in
understanding the root cause of the delay and evaluate how delay will be induced
in original plan. I will also assess the nature of root cause whether it is a
temporary cause which can cause short term impact or a problem that needs to be
fixed to ensure sanctity to rest of the program. Long Term Causes could be
Testing delays, API unstability, integration failures whereas temporary delays
term could be users testing delayed due to business event. Based on this
assessment I will create my action plan and communication strategy to all
stakeholders. I will revise the program plan and milestones, show variance in
plan and record the root cause for same. I set up governance cadence with all
stakeholder to update on the impact, analysis and action plan strategy and send
a formal communication to bring everyone on board with the situation.

Anonymous · Answer

S: In my early days as Program Manager, I managed a project for one of our main
customers. This project had a very tight schedule and I promised to deliver the
first EVT units in a certain date.
T: As PM, it was my responsibility to ensure that everything was completed on
time, within budget, and in line with the quality standardsdefined at the
program kick-off.
A: Unfortunately, when I started to deep dive into the project and analyze the
technical details, I realized that meeting the original delivery timeline was
not feasible. So, I immediately took action by developing a new, realistic
schedule to mitigate the issue. To ensure better alignment, I implemented daily
opening and closing meetings with the core team to closely monitor activities
and prevent task duplication across teams. Two key factors contributed to the
milestone delay: a delay in component deliveries and one mistake on my part—I
had skipped one of the Reliability testsdefined by Engineering before product
delivery.
R: I highlighted the issue to my manager and shared my revised plan, including a
new feasible timeline. After explaining the situation, we worked together to
align on a new delivery date and informed our customer.
This experience taught me valuable lessons. Now, I always build buffer time into
my project schedules and work more closely with core team members to anticipate
potential risks. However, the most important lesson I learned was the value of
honesty and proactive communication—raising concerns early is crucial to
success.

Anonymous · Answer

First key action is it identify what is delayed, how is this delayed, what is
the overall status, red or yellow, summarize these, ensure to identify the steps
to address the delay, Communicate with Stakeholders by Keeping them informed
about the delay, overall status, and the path to green.
I would like to share an example of a delay in API review due to Primary
Software Development Engineer (SDE's) lack of experience in API reviews,
Challenges included difficulty in compiling key documents and summarizing them
for the review, resulting in a 1-week delay.
Secured additional partial SDE support to assist the Primary SDE in compiling
and summarizing the required documents where I also contributed to these.
Additionally it is only very limited window where reviewers are available, I had
to work with the Application Program Interface (API) reviewer manager to secure
API reviewer and collaborate with the team where I used meetings, slack and
emails and was eventually able to absorb the 1 week delay without impacting the
overall committed timeline.
Key Takeaways:
· Proactive identification of delays and their root causes is critical.
· Collaboration and communication with stakeholders are essential to managing
delays effectively.
· Providing additional support and resources can help mitigate delays and
maintain project timelines.
Additionally I ensured that the key resources are able to identify the key need
by dates for each task, know what they need to be able to complete the task, ask
where support is needed also have clear communication on the delays in task that
will help manage the program to create success for everyone.

Anonymous · Answer

First key action is it identify what is delayed, how is this delayed, what is
the overall status, red or yellow, summarize these, ensure to identify the steps
to address the delay, Communicate with Stakeholders by Keeping them informed
about the delay, overall status, and the path to green.
I would like to share an example of a delay in Application Programming Interface
(API) review due to Primary Software Development Engineer (SDE's) lack of
experience in API reviews, Challenges included difficulty in compiling key
documents and summarizing them for the review, resulting in a 1-week delay.
Secured additional partial SDE support to assist the Primary SDE in compiling
and summarizing the required documents where I also contributed to these.
Additionally it is only very limited window where reviewers are available, I had
to work with the Application Program Interface (API) reviewer manager to secure
API reviewer and collaborate with the team where I used meetings, slack and
emails and was eventually able to absorb the 1 week delay without impacting the
overall committed timeline.
Key Takeaways:
· Proactive identification of delays and their root causes is critical.
· Collaboration and communication with stakeholders are essential to managing
delays effectively.
· Providing additional support and resources can help mitigate delays and
maintain project timelines.
Additionally I ensured that the key resources are able to identify the key need
by dates for each task, know what they need to be able to complete the task, ask
where support is needed also have clear communication on the delays in task that
will help manage the program to create success for everyone.

Anonymous · Answer

I will document the delay as a risk and look for mitigations as soon as I find
out the delay. Using the documented risk I will communicate with stakeholders to
keep them informed and ensure alignment in the mitigating steps. As this is the
first milestone I would ensure that milestones that depend on it won’t be
impacted.
I faced a similar challenge when managing the Flutter security program where
everything depended on the implementation of secure infrastructure. The way I
managed delays on some of the milestones was with a detailed risk and dependency
management. Ensuring there were multiple tasks that could be worked on when one
of the work streams got blocked. This way I managed to make consistent progress
with efficient use of resources. Updating the program plans, running frequent
risks assessments and effective communication were the key tools to keep the
program execution timelines and any deviations from the program approved and
evaluated by stakeholders.

Saranya Ravikumar · Answer

Follow up questions:

It is ambiguous. As you know may be that’s the [purpose. Hence few clarifying
questions.

The way to handle depends on lot of factors a)How many is a delay? Couple of
days vs a week vs more than 2 weeks etc b)What is the overall impact of the
final delivery, can we catch up in the next milestone or not? c)Any dependent
stakeholders impacted? Like QA team, beta, exec review etc.

Can you be precise? Or can I make assumptions and provide answers?

Assumption: I have a real world example where I couldn’t meet the FC (feature
complete milestone ) and missed it by 3 weeks, that too on a Dec holiday
weekend. If you are fine with this example, I can proceed next.

Now let me explain my role and the situation so that my answers are clear.

We were working on a up level task moving from A16 to A-17. I am the feature TPM
for SYSteMUI, an android component. We need to deliver in 5 weeks to port all
our changes from A16 to A-17. However due to tech challenges, we had completed
only 70% of it. We had 3 weeks of pending work. The challenge we willl be
merging the changes only around the next milestone called as BC, beta candidate.

One, I already know that we will not meet the timeline like couple of weeks
before. It was not learning and reacting. We learnt it in advance when we did a
quick PoC for every feature in the commit. Eg: A-17 had desktop mode feature
that changed quite a bit of work to us. Hence informed the stakeholders like QA
team external QA team, beta, execs in advance of this delay. Thought it will
delay the delivery of the feature, it will not impact the overall program due to
contingencies like a)Asked the beta homework due date for the respective feature
as per the available b) requested QA team to perform other test in advance to
free up bandwidth for this feature when it gets merged c) created a separate PWS
with execs as we couldn’t meet their scheduled PWS. d)sent a broader
communication to all QA teams and tracked their test sign go closely after merge
e)prepared additional resource (freeing up from other projects) to support 2
weeks of back up if there are new bugs as the feature is coming in late.

Result:

We delivered 3 weeks later. Though it was a contingency, after coming from
holidays we found huge number of bugs due to the late merge and had limited time
to fix as the beta exec dates are scheduled accordingly and the milestone cannot
delay further. Used the additional anticipated resources to fix the blocker
bugs. Even after that we had few bugs that we took exception from product team
to go to beta, execs as known issues that will not interrupt the flow. Post that
fixed all of them before going to customers.

Anonymous · Answer

Well, I'm going to... If something has been deleted, then there are a few action
items which are going to be there on my side. First, that I am going to intimate
all the stakeholders which are involved in that. Maybe I'm going to send a note
to them that due to some certain reasons, we are not able to push the code in
production environment. With the truth that what things have happened. Second, I
am going to debug into this that why certain things could not be planned
appropriately. That why the timeline was there and why we could not meet it. It
could be that it is a reason behind that we did not commit it correctly or we
over-committed for it. And we never understood in the first place that how much
complex the work is going to be. So the over-commitment or under-commitment, I'm
going to assess along with the team. Maybe in the retro call or something. And
we'll plan for it again for the new release. By fixing all the defects in case
if defects are there. So I'm going to plan for it for the new release. And then
I'm going to send a note to the stakeholders that this is the new release date.

Anonymous · Answer

First key action is it identify what is delayed, how is this delayed, what is
the overall status, red or yellow, summarize these, ensure to identify the steps
to address the delay, communicate with key stakeholders , on the delay, overall
status and path to green, work on the steps identified to bring this back to
green.
I would like to share an example of a delay in API review, primarily it was the
very first time that the Primary  SDE was working for Application Programming
Interface (API) review and had challenges to put together the key documents and
summarize for API review causing 1 week delay, I secured additional partial SDE
to support the primary SDE. Additionally it is only very limited window where
reviewers are available, I had to work with the key manager to secure API
reviewer and collaborate with the team where I used meetings, slack and emails
and was eventually able to absorb the 1 week delay without impacting the overall
committed timeline. In retrospect I also enabled the SDE's to be able to
identify and communicate early to get support which would ensure that the
program timeline impacted

Anonymous · Answer

First key action is it identify what is delayed, how is this delayed, what is
the overall status, red or yellow, summarize these, ensure to identify the steps
to address the delay, communicate with key stakeholders , on the delay, overall
status and path to green, work on the steps identified to bring this back to
green.

I would like to share an example of a delay in API review, primarily it was the
very first time that the Primary  SDE was working for API review and had
challenges to put together the key documents and summarize for API review
causing 1 week delay, I secured additional partial SDE to support the primary
SDE. Additionally it is only very limited window where reviewers are available,
I had to work with the key manager to secure API reviewer and collaborate with
the team where I used meetings, slack and emails and was eventually able to
absorb the 1 week delay without impacting the overall committed timeline.

Anonymous · Answer

Delay in API review and new scope of Security review was triggered by the 3rd
party vendor turning the overall status to Red and required to identify path to
green. This would block the production and would lose the customer base having
monetization impact of 18 millions dollar and branding impacted.
The Monitoring team that own the feature and services was a long pole and  App
team had dependencies, I had identified the intersections and  included the API
dependency and need by date. (Overall, Home Monitoring Cloud team's effort was
15 weeks and Astro App team was 6 weeks).
API review is one of the dev task and is about 2 weeks, this includes securing
the API teams availability and scheduling walkthrough, provide responses on the
clarifying asks from the API review board, this is managed by the SDM.
Additionally, Security review got triggered for the overall application as this
was classified as Red application and it does go through intensive review of the
overall app to get certified, there was a change in the ownership and new SDM
being transitioned and was a key miss. We had new SDM and had 2 key misses, that
was impacting the Feature release since it was adding 4 additional weeks of
effort (high confidence).
I prioritized the API review and reached out to the core API team and connected
and shared the document which captured the current goal, timelines and
deliverables, key asks for the API review and secured additional partial
resource to support the primary engineers to move fast and the key was to absorb
the delay. When I connected with the API team and reviewed the core details, the
ask was to connect to their manager to secure bandwidth and availability and
took 2 days for the discussions and the API review to start. Eventually there
was additional effort from the SDE and including the on call support helped
absorb the 1 weeks delay.
I had parallelly initiated the discussion with the Amazon Security team and the
3rd party vendor management team and proposed to limit the scope to the delta
changes that has happened for this key feature which is 2 specific API’s and 3
code packages, as a fast follow did take ownership to support the team through
out for the entire app certifications

Anonymous · Answer

The primary aspect would be to keep the transparency with the stakeholders.
Analyze the reason for the delay - whether it is a delay due to technical issues
or any 3rd party - communicate this to the customers. Along with it share the
next planned release date for the first milestone.

Anonymous · Answer

Will communicate on the delay and why it got delayed and what are the measures
we are going to take avoid the future delays and will provide options to client
oh splitting the milestone into further phases

Anonymous · Answer

The first thing I would do is communicate with Stakeholder.  Announce the delay
and outline of action plan to address the solution, just so I can maintain
transparency and trust.   In the mean time, I would try to figure the root of
issue.   Once found, I would re-culculate the timeline, re-prioritize the hight
impact task, and implement solution.

How will you handle a delay in your first milestone?

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