Is your company a place where requesters are constantly pushing for things to be done more quickly? How do you manage them?

Using LinkedIn, Aranuir makes this question:

Is your company a place where requesters are constantly pushing for things to be done more quickly? How do you manage them?

The subject is interesting, mainly because I use to think about such matter as a problem specific to an organization (country / group / project) but finding it in a forum like LinkedIn tells me it is a more global issue.

The issue involves all the knowledge areas established in the PMBOK, but I think the solution has more to do with soft skills.

The soft skills can develop communication, leadership and self-organization, to resolve human conflicts and entrepreneurship. (Herman Bustos, 2007).

Basically, are the capabilities that allow a professional to relate well at work: from speaking different languages and use computers to leadership and teamwork. Soft skills complement the hard skills of traditional management education.

Manuel Gross, Irwin José Franco y Jose Esterkin have written interesting articles about it (in Spanish).

In this view,the importance of the request depends on the type of stakeholder. There are “the heavy weights” that can decide the cancellation or continuation of the project, although there are others who know the inner workings of the organization to detail, but have no weight in the administrative aspects of the project.

But there's always a stakeholder who has more interest in the success of the project (so called "champion" in other methodologies) (Bremer, 2004). The Project Manager must Identify and utilize its support.

With the help of the scope statement, the baseline and resources management documents , the Project Manager must negotiate, if possible supported by the "champion" to make clear the full implications and impacts on other variables of the project.

In response to Aranuir.

Is your company a place where requesters are constantly pushing for things to be done more quickly? How do you manage them?

Yes. Stakeholders are pushing all the time for things made quickly. The only way I think can prevent this is to establish clear rules, make a proper handling of project scope, base line and take advantage of his/her communication skills.

Reference: Bremer, Michael, Lorraine Daniels, Praveen Gupta, and Thomas McCarty. The Six Sigma Black Belt Handbook (Six SIGMA Operational Methods). New York: McGraw-Hill Professional, 2004. pp 64