Project acceleration: approaches, risks and practices (part 1)

The management of a project has often to deal with some unforeseen and occurrences that have some negative impacts in terms of value of the project, capability to face uncertainty, completion time, overall budget, reputation of the organization, relationship with stakeholders, competitiveness and sustainability. It can be supposed that more experienced project managers could add even further potential impacts. One of the main pains for a project manager is to deal with some delay in progressing, with the consequent necessity to set some countermeasures so to accelerate the remaining part of the project. For this reason, it could be valuable to investigate what are the approaches the companies where projects represent their core business, or a relevant part of it, can apply and their effectiveness. This research aims, after an initial review of the typical approaches and their expected impact and inherent risks, so to shed some light on the most frequently adopted practices and the real benefits they were able to give to the project progress. The first part of the paper outlines critically the pillars of the problem (context, methods, risks), whilst the second part is based on a survey joined by 50 project managers and other roles involved in managing projects, operating in companies of different industries.