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Rate of Delay, Senior Scheduler Jobs and Reacting Slowly

Rate of Delay, Senior Scheduler Jobs and Reacting Slowly

Micah Piippo
October 07, 2024

Welcome back to Beyond Deadlines newsletter—a free perk for people looking to improve in Planning and Scheduling. Each week, we provide tactics, prompts, jobs and food for thought. We want you to succeed today, tomorrow and throughout the rest of your career.

In my experience consulting with enterprises of all types, most managers admit to reacting to situations too quickly and immediately trying to solve a problem. Before getting themselves oriented to the system and looking for second-order dynamics and assumptions, they start acting. The first shift in leadership thinking in a systems environment is a shift from action leadership to thought and emotional leadership.

Simple_Complexity by William PhD Donaldson

Most project metrics fail to capture one key insight: the rate at which delays accumulate.

(And this is the missing context that can make or break a project.)

Here’s why this matters:

Imagine a milestone with a -10 day variance. Looks bad, right?

But without context, it's impossible to tell if this is a one-off issue or the fourth delay this month.

The real question isn't just "how late are we?" but "are delays becoming a pattern?"

One delay is manageable, but repeated delays? Big problem.

By monitoring the frequency and acceleration of delays, teams can detect underlying risks before they spiral out of control.

This approach applies to nearly any metric or KPI—not just delays.

Whether you're tracking cost overruns, resource usage, or other performance indicators, measuring how fast problems accumulate gives you deeper insight into project health.

Daily News for Curious Minds

“I stopped watching the news, so sick of the bias. Was searching for an alternative that would just tell me WHAT happened, with NO editorializing. I found it. It’s called 1440. It assumes you are smart enough to form your own opinions.”

Calculate the Rate of Delay

Copy and paste this prompt into ChatGPT, Gemini or Claude.

Act as a Senior Construction Scheduler who excels at analyzing data to identify the rate of delay.

Using a provided dataset that includes (insert an explanation of your data here). Reference a successful project where you effectively calculated the rate of delay, leading to proactive adjustments that kept the project on track. Deliver a clear and concise report with charts, percentage breakdowns, and actionable insights in a structured format, maintaining a solution-oriented and analytical tone throughout. Before you begin, ask me 3 questions to help improve your answer.