• My planning makes this kind of hand-holding unnecessary and, in some quarters, insulting.
• I'm too busy to do this.
• I'd be accused of micro-managing if I did that.
• More often than not, I find that participants don't need any 'input' from me.
• I don't have a single place (as in a Daytimer©, PalmPilot©, etc.) where I could look to find out who's starting what when.
• If I find someone who isn't ready to go, the time I spend getting them ready and going really trashes my work schedule. So I just let them do that work while I pay the price of a short delay.

Why You Should

You avoid the classic project pitfall of having your schedule 'nickel-ed and dime'd' to death by several short but deadly delays because you check on people who may have forgotten or postponed their project commitments.

You follow up on promises to resource your participants by confirming that they have any equipment, software or other non-routine 'stuff' that work on your project would require.

If someone hasn't gotten a participant something s/he'll need to do his/her work, you have enough time to get it for her without schedule-killing delays. (You know that some participants will actually not do the project work and not check in with you under the excuse that you didn't get the resources they needed and that you promised.)

You can juggle project timelines (eg. slack time, float time, the critical path) because you're regularly comparing the actual progress of project work against your best estimate, as it appears in the project plan.

You can remedy problems (eg. ability over-estimates, competing priorities, wrong resources, malicious compliance, etc.) before they breach your schedule or degrade the quality of an intermediate result.

You can ensure that the project schedule isn't busted by the need for re-work due to unacceptable intermediate results.

 

Some Tips On How To

As noted earlier, use your planner to schedule these task-start and monitoring meetings with any participants who you may not be 100% ready, willing and able.

Take a few minutes to generate a checklist that begins with the item topics below and goes on with any project specific readiness/performance topics you believe are important:

• Ready to start?
• Got all needed resources?
• Making progress on the milestone as predicted?
• Sticking to/above intermediate outcome quality standards?
• Having any problems or performance/progress shortfalls?

In a non-confrontational, warm-&-friendly way, ask to see what they've done. Be curious and interested rather than distrusting and inspector-like. But whatever you do, don't let a procrastinating participant bust your schedule.