“Last week, you assigned this task to Dale, but you ended up doing it,” I observed. I could tell Sondra was very pleased with the project result, but miffed that she spent the weekend working when Dale had all of last week to work on it.
“I thought about, what you said, being more explicit about my deadline. Next time, I will try to remember that,” Sondra replied.
“More than that, the target completion time is essential to the task assignment. Dale gets all kinds of assignments. To complete them, he has to use his own discretion, primarily about pace and quality. Most of the decisions he makes are about pace and quality. Without a target completion time, he has no frame of reference in which to make his decisions. His ASAP will ALWAYS be different than your ASAP. ASAP is not a target completion time.”
Sondra smiled. I took a look at her project. It was really very good. She will make her client meeting today and life will go on.
Tom ASAP is poison and means nothing.
I have been thinking about this lately the person who says ASAP to projects has to say everything ASAP then time frame is meaningless.
If you need it quick set a short time frame, that is realistic.
I totally agree with you michael project can’t be good if it start with ASAP