Earlier in my career I had so much fun finishing programming tasks in 1/3 of the time allotted by the project manager. I thought it was best to work hard enough to accomplish things blazingly fast.
However, when my sister learned about this she disagreed and told me how their Japanese client takes it against you for finishing things earlier than expected. She explained how they were taught to finish things on time and do things accurately as expected.
I found that philosophy odd but later on I realized the importance of spacing out your activities using all the days allocated for it.
Why shouldn’t you finish the job earlier?
1. Clients are expecting you to deliver on a certain date which means they have freed up their schedule for such delivery. Getting it earlier doesn’t add any value and clients would just put that in their schedule to do queue.
2. Don’t burn yourself up and work everything out. Learn to manage yourself and spread the work accordingly.
3. Metrics would change and clients would think projects can be done in half the time. Next time they would ask everyone on the team to deliver same results which can result to burn out with the entire team.
Conclusion
Good project management is able to spread work across days and allowing people to do other stuff and work that would help him develop his skills. Use your time wisely and avoid burning yourself up.
[tags]Project Management[/tags]