Do you think employees, group leads, or even project managers should get penalized for going over a project deadline or over the allotted expenses? If yes, what should their "punishment" be?
A lot of situations can arise during a projects lifetime that would result in going over time and budget, such as needing newer equipment, not accounting for production/shipping/delivery time, prices of raw materials increasing, etc. Any combination of things, even changes that are minuscule can cause a project to go over the deadline and/or over budget.
I think it should be handled differently depending on the reason. As people work, they will certainly encounter the unexpected event. If punishment is imposed even for justifiable reasons, members of the organization will be reluctant to participate in the work. However, there must be a punishment for not completing the project within the existing budget and time due to the laziness of the team members.
While I agree with Wonbum that there maybe extenuating circumstances for going over time or budget I firmly believe that you need not only penalization but also rewards to complete the project on time. While it would be nice to imagine that everyone would try there hardest to complete the project on time it is important to have an incentive or disincentive for completing the project on time. For example if the project is completed late there is a punishment whereas if it is completed ahead of schedule there should be a reward. This simple carrot and stick method is useful for successfully incentivizing high productivity among the workers and makes completion of the project on time the norm with benefits for early completion and punishments for late completion.
Preparing for potential delays is nearly impossible, as there are many variables which could influence the timeline of a project. I do not believe that there should be a penalty for a reasonable delay or over-spending during the project. It would not be fair to any working member to be penalized for unexpected changes in the project. This opinion is based on the layout and scheduling of the project and how well the potential delays were predicted or anticipated, as well as how quickly they were identified and fixed. If the team was working diligently and fixing problems quickly, the penalties should not happen.
However, if the team came across a problem which should have been identified, or a problem was not fixed as quickly as possible, then there should be a penalty instilled. If the urgency caused the timeline to extend or the budget to spill over, then it would be fair to punish the team somehow (if the proper preparations were not taken for planning the project out).
I think the manager should consider the budget/ schedule issue while preparing the plan for the whole project. The project manager should make sure the team always has extra time for each different project step in case something might happen and interrupt the project schedule. For this reason, the project manager should take the responsibility for finishing the project on time and budget. In this situation, the project manager might need to be penalized. But there might be some unexpected issue which might affect the project delay and over budget. For example, in the pandemic, many projects get delayed beyond human control. In this situation, no one should be penalized. Also, some team members might not finish their work or make some mistakes which lead to the project over budget and time. In this situation, these team members should be penalized.
Employees, group leads and project managers should only be penalized for going over the project deadline and budget if there was a poor plan in place that did not accurately showcase the true nature of the project. As said in lecture, if you fail to plan, you plan to fail. I find it best to slightly over budget and make a personal deadline for the project to be completed two weeks before the actual deadline. Doing so allows you enough leeway in case there are any unexpected events that occur whether that's a team member having to unexpectedly call out or issues with suppliers.
In the case that there is a justifiable reason for a project to go over budget or the deadline, they should have the chance to present their case and explain the issues and proposed solutions.
I do not believe that if a team is going over budget or is not able to complete their task because of a delay, they should not be punished because oftentimes there are variables that are out of the team's control. Because of this, I believe that frequent check-ins with the task lead is key and integral to a good outcome and making sure that if a task is going to go beyond the given budget or time, that it can be planned for downstream and other tasks that might be able to accommodate being pushed further.
However, if clear communications is not established, then whoever is the task lead should take responsibility and fix the problem that arose. It is the responsibility of the team to notify the project manager that a project might be going over budget or beyond the time. By doing this, there is ample amount of time to prepare for said interruptions and will allow the project manager to plan ahead. This would allow for the PM themselves to request for more time or for an extension from their senior manager and this could potentially increase the slack on other processes and give the problem task enough time to finish.
Other than what is stated above penalizing any one is just going to result in work environment where risks aren't taken and everything is done with minimal agency. Most people would not want to work until they have approval of their seniors or managers since accepting responsibility for something that is not entirely your fault is hard to do. A good way to avoid overbudgeting and deadline would be make that knowledge known all members of the team rather than just a few people or the project manger. This could help everyone understand the situation at hand and work collaboratively to come up with ideas to meet the end goal without overbudgeting and going past the deadline.
I agree with the above posts that "punishment" really needs to be assessed on a case by case basis. During the project process and development of a project, there are unforeseen obstacles that may arise despite countless efforts to mitigate such obstacles from occurring. If this happens, it is important the project manager reacts appropriately and creates a game plan to move forward. In this case, sometimes it may be essential to recruit additional team members or rearrange task deliverables/assignments. In this situation where a truly unforeseen obstacle arises and delays the projects, I don't believe the project manager or team should be punished. Especially when the team has done everything they can to come back from this situation. However, if a project does not meet deliverables due to the team slacking or not prioritizing their work, I do believe there should be some level of punishment associated. This is because project managers and team members take on a level of accountability and trust when beginning a new project. By not fulfilling their responsibilities, it negatively impacts the entire team.
Being penalized for going over time and more particularly the budget should be punishable only under certain circumstances. What I mean by this is sometimes a project manager, employee, group leader has a vision and is confident enough to see it through and depending on how well the initial progress is going. If things are going great and all that's left is a little extra push for a real breakthrough then going over will eventually be worth it. However, if there's no viable reason to do so then yer, there should definitely be consequences.
I agree that if delays occur or the project goes over the allotted expenses that the penalties if any should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis. If any person mentioned above was negligent or trying to cut corners and causes serious delays and more money being poured into the project, they should face repercussions for their actions. These repercussions should reflect the level of gravity that it impacted the project. If it could have caused harm to any of the users using the project, the penalties should be more severe as many biomedical devices have the capability to both help and harm the user. On the other hand, especially in a long-term project, it is hard to predict the price that supplies will be when you will need them five to ten years in advance. This has become especially true during the pandemic, as the cost of supplies has significantly increased, and the time that it takes many items to ship has become significantly longer. This blame could not be placed on any individual, and no one would deserve to be punished for the extra money or time needed to complete the project well.
I feel that there is no blanket answer but let's assume the project had a strict deadline with only so much funding. Since this is quite realistic, I believe punishment is necessary. The degree should depend on how much experience the individual(s) have and their job title (employee/manager). A manager should get a higher form of punishment compared to a new hire employee. As for what exactly the punishment should be, perhaps letting one mistake slide, a warning on the second one, and being fired or demotion for the third. Kind of like, 1, 2, 3 strikes you’re out. I don’t have experience in the field, this answer is coming from imagination.
Do you think employees, group leads, or even project managers should get penalized for going over a project deadline or over the allotted expenses? If yes, what should their "punishment" be?
A lot of situations can arise during a projects lifetime that would result in going over time and budget, such as needing newer equipment, not accounting for production/shipping/delivery time, prices of raw materials increasing, etc. Any combination of things, even changes that are minuscule can cause a project to go over the deadline and/or over budget.
When creating a schedule for a project, you choose specific dates to when you want each component of the project completed. However, there is some leeway in most schedules because of Murphy's law, which states that if anything can go wrong, it will go wrong. I believe you cannot just punish an employee if they are a day late, but if they are over a week late, you begin to start asking the employee why the project is late. If the excuse is due to a piece of equipment that is not in the employees' control, but if the reason is due to being lazy, there should be at least some overtime work that must be done to catch up to the schedule. So one should genuinely understand the situation before handing out any punishment.
Project penalization should be dependent on the situation. Essentially a project managers job is to make sure each deadline can be met at an attainable goal. They also need to allow for some slack in their timelines, and have optimal communication. I think if these factors were not taken into consideration such as time, communication, or acting on urgency there should be a penalization. But in the case of something out of control such as a pandemic, I do not think anybody should be penalized for projects because of the fact there is a global shortage in product, no shipment, and overall issues that are completely out of everyones hands in the project from researchers all the way to project managers.
