Everyone handles tight deadlines differently.
Some people turn into productivity machines, working day and night until the job is done. Others look for ways to streamline their processes or deliverables so that there’s as little waste as possible and they can focus on the biggest priorities.
And some people like to wait for the very last minute and then work like a madman up until the final second.
And while all of those strategies work (some better than others…), when you’re part of a team, it’s important to find a rhythm for everyone that allows you to get things done.
It’s something we deal with a lot here, as we’re often managing not only ourselves but our clients, all working together to get big, beautiful things done quickly — sometimes, depending on the client’s upcoming board meeting or launch date, *very* quickly.
So with the idea of getting things done in mind, here are 7 of our best strategies for doing beautiful work and being productive, no matter what.
1. Set expectations early and often
There should never be a question about who is doing what, and how much time they have to do it in. In your early meetings, decide exactly who will do what and when.
Most people are pretty bad at estimating how long things will take them to do, so any estimates you get from other people about how long their parts will take, just go ahead and add a couple of extra hours into your plans.
If there are unknowns (and there usually are), it can be hard to know exactly how long those will take or how they’ll get resolved. However, that doesn’t mean you should do nothing now.
Instead, talk through possible ways to find solutions. Is this something you can research? Is it something you’ll learn through the course of working on other parts of the project? Nail down who will do the learning, and set a meeting for a future date to talk through solutions once you have more information. If you don’t tackle them early, these often get left for the last minute and can create a lot of unnecessary extra work and stress at a critical time.
2. Make a timeline with checkpoints
It can be tempting to fill everyone in on the end goal and then send them off to work. However, this usually results in chaos, confusion, and things not quite coming together in the end.
It is better to break any big job down into small jobs that can be completed and shared with the rest of the team. Make it clear to people at what points they are going to be expected to check in, and then follow up with them at those times to make sure you’re getting the status update you need and sharing that information with the whole team.
The more people understand what everyone else is doing, the more seamlessly all the parts will come together and you won’t waste time getting everyone aligned (and potentially un-doing many hours of work) at the end.
3. Reduce waste, not quality
A great way to get work done fast is to bring in extra hands, like freelancers, to help take some of the workload. There’s no reason for your top designer to spend hours dropping simple text into a site design, rather than designing. Scour your project for things that don’t absolutely need to be done by your people, and try to assign them out.
Be careful not to outsource too much of the important stuff, however, or ask people to make their timeline estimates razor-thin. You still want your work to match the outstanding quality that made this client hire you in the first place.
Be realistic about what can be accomplished, and look for places to reduce waste (like elements that don’t absolutely need to be done by the earliest deadline, for example) rather than trying to get people to do impossible things at the cost of quality.
4. Schedule regular check-ins
It might feel like meetings slow you down, but actually, staying in touch helps people be more productive. Why? Because when everyone’s on the same page, less time gets spent fixing mistakes or discovering people have done duplicate work.
Put a recurring meeting on everyone’s calendar (including any freelancers or outside help you’ve brought in) and make sure everyone is reporting their status regularly. It’s good to have internal meetings regularly where you can talk about problems and concerns, as well as ones with the client, to show them your progress and get feedback as you go.
5. Communicate openly about problems
If you hit a roadblock, it can be tempting to want to just cover it up and not mention it. Sometimes that works, if you can buy yourself some time to find a solution. However, on a tight deadline, you don’t have that time — so it’s best to just be upfront about any problems that might impact the schedule so that expectations can be managed and you can have the maximum help problem-solving.
If you hit a problem and you don’t know the answer, troubleshoot as a team before involving the client (it’s your job to make this work, after all). If you need to research strategies or new ideas, be really clear about who is expected to look up what and when they’ll need to present their results.
And if you need the client to make a decision — if you discover there’s just no way to make the original idea work, for example — get them involved as soon as possible. Don’t call them in a panic or explain the problem like an emergency; just let them know the facts and present a couple of possible workarounds. Always come with a solution, or at the very least, a set of questions that will help them define what needs to happen next.
6. Be flexible and don’t undo things you don’t have to
Sometimes, people have to make decisions on the fly and things don’t get done exactly according to plan. Ideally, if you’re communicating, people will know about changes right away.
When these changes or unexpected decisions happen, don’t freak out. When you’re on a tight deadline, often the best course of action is do your best to understand the implications of the change, adjust any impacted plans accordingly, and then just go with it — rather than trying to fix it or go back and do it the way you want.
Of course, if the change will cause long term problems (especially ones the client might have to deal with), then it might be worth fixing. But if it’s simply not ideal or what you had planned, consider whether or not you can just go with it.
Maybe things won’t get done exactly how you would have planned them in a perfect world, but you’re not in a perfect world in this situation, and if the deadline is firm, then it’s better to keep going than to waste time redoing work.
7. Celebrate afterwards
This might seem frivolous, but for team morale, it really counts.
When you accomplish a really big project on a tight deadline, a lot of stress, late nights, and emotions are often behind you. It is worth letting your team know how well they’ve done and how valuable each of their contributions was to making this thing happen.
The happier and more appreciated people feel after meeting a huge goal, the more likely they are to be ready to pull more all-nighters and do an amazing job next time too. If they committed the time and effort to getting , a celebration of their efforts will go a long way.
Get excited for your next big project!
A tight deadline strikes fear into the heart of many — but with these tips up your sleeve, you’ll knock em dead. Good luck!