I have not worked in industry but I am currently working on my senior capstone project where we are developing a device and mimicking how the process would occur in industry (having status meetings, design reviews, etc.) My group and I have done a really good job at being realistic with our customer and our advisor about the design expectations, so we know we will be able to deliver exactly what they ask for. Additionally, we have placed buffers in our schedule for situations where we might encounter issues, which has happened. Our main strategy for when we are at a standstill in one area of the project is to try and progress in another. Therefore, in our status meetings we say something along the lines of “we had some delays in this area, but took the opportunity to get ahead on this in order to be able to dedicate more time to the other area next week.” For the most part this strategy has worked and we have been able to stay on time keeping both our customer and advisor content.