There are a few things you can do to mitigate the unexpected Christmas delay. At the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year, your project planning still looks reliable.

Your project is on schedule and you’ve nothing to worry about. You’ve taken the Christmas period into account in your planning and there’s no reason to worry.

By November things start to change, your project is not running smooth anymore and one issue after the other pops-up.

And suddenly, there it is…standing in your way, the Christmas holidays.

It seems like the whole world is taking two weeks of vacation and nobody is working on your new product development anymore.

Is Christmas often causing delay in your projects?

Does this resonate with you?

It suddenly seems that almost two weeks are eaten out of your project planning due to Christmas. Not to mention that you also need to revise your planning regarding Chinese New Year. At least, if you’re dealing with the Far East.

You probably feel your stress level rising and you desperately need to change things around.

There are a few things you can do to mitigate the unexpected Christmas delay.

1. Change sea shipments (partly) into air shipments to gain time. You’ll prevent losing precious time before the holidays waiting for samples or finished goods to arrive at your desk or warehouse.

2. Meet more frequently with your project team and external parties in the last quarter of the year to make sure you can pro-actively manage your project and take corrective actions in time. Better to have short actionable meetings than being informed too late about issues.

Want to know why Core Project team meetings are must? Check out this blog article.

3. Know exactly when your core project team members, third party suppliers, agencies etcetera have their last working day before the Christmas holidays. This will differ a lot per organization and per person. This very important to know because in some cases there will be an issue if a project deliverable is missing, and the responsible person is already on holiday.

4. Know exactly when your core project team members, third party suppliers, agencies etcetera have their last working day before the Christmas holidays. This will differ a lot per organization and per person. This very important to know because in some cases there will be an issue if a project deliverable is missing, and the responsible person is already on holiday.

5. Note down exactly when your core project team members, third party suppliers, agencies etcetera will be back after the Christmas holidays. This will enable you to immediately contact them to take corrective actions if needed.

Give your project planning a good start

6. At the beginning of your project, build in a buffer around the Christmas holidays in your project planning. This will avoid stress and overwhelm for your project team members. It will also facilitate that the introduction date of your new product to your customers can be met.

7. Create a very detailed project planning, including all project deliverables, even the required shipment time of samples, review time needed to evaluate these samples by your team and stakeholders, time needed to update samples and ship them again. If you go into the nitty gritty in your project plan, you’ll be able to micro-manage and be more in control of your new product development.

Check out this blog article if you like to know more about creating a detailed project planning.

8. When you enter the fourth quarter of the year, define a Plan B together with your team. If the unforeseen happens, you have an action plan ready and can mitigate the risks.

Is Christmas often causing delay in your projects? You have time to settle things before it’s too late, we are still in October, so plenty of time!

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What are your crash actions and mitigation tactics to overcome unexpected delays?