For the past few months, I’ve been interviewing agency owners trying to better understand the issues they’re experiencing as they scale. A few issues kept coming up over and over again. Among them: stretching project timelines.

CEOs and owners would say something along the lines of “Our timelines are stretching out to get things done. We spend a fortune in QA and rework just to make sure that what is being sent out to the customer is still good quality.”

As businesses grow, things take longer. It’s tempting to spread the blame around to everyone, but the culprit isn’t one person. It’s non-standardized processes, bad employee training, and doing work that doesn’t matter.

Non-Standardized Processes

When you start out, everything you do is custom work. But as you grow that customization can actually be what causes lag in your business. It clogs up the work pipeline and confuses your team. 

Bad Training

There is a learning curve to joining a team. That learning curve stretches everything out. It takes longer to do something your 15th time than to do it your 150th.

Asking new team members to immediately start working without training is like throwing them into the deep end of the pool. Some may learn to swim, but most are drowning.  

Doing Work That Doesn’t Matter

Growing businesses are often the victim of scope, feature, or offering creep. They start offering extra bells and whistles that are really cool, but don’t matter. That creep eats up time that you could’ve spent doing project-critical work, creating lag and stretching your project timelines.

While they may seem like they add value, they aren’t necessary for the customer to make progress and hold you back. They’re stretching your timelines without giving anything in return.

Is something causing delays or stretching your timelines? Let’s have a conversation about how this applies to your agency. Schedule an appointment here or reach out to zac@homericconsulting.com.