Develop a plan or schedule as soon as you understand your project. It need not be a complete understanding. There is not enough time to wait for a complete understanding of your project before you plan.

Get your team working to deadlines. Identify deliverables and assign responsibility for the completion of those deliverables. Hold assignees accountable, including you. If you fail to live up to your obligations, you cannot expect your team to live up to theirs. ‘Do as I say, not as I do’, will not work here.

Always track your performance against your plan. You should change your plan, when you can no longer realistically follow the original plan. Before you change, know why. This is not a trivial exercise. Changing the plan is an admission that something was wrong with your plan.

If the scope of work is misunderstood, or has changed, find out why. If the estimate is flawed, find out why. If the project team is not working efficiently, find out why. Once you understand the reason(s) why, fix it (them). If you can’t fix the problem, you won’t have a successful project.

Another essential step is ‘buy-in’. If the person assigned the task does not accept ownership of that task, that task will not be delivered when expected or to the degree expected. Incomplete performance is not acceptable. Make sure the assignee knows what you expect, along with when you expect it.

If they need more resources – staff or time – make every effort to get it for them.