The Correct Answer and Explanation is:
The correct answer is: Tell the requester the proposed timeline won’t work and ask for a later due date.
Explanation
This decision is based on a straightforward analysis of the project’s constraints. The core responsibility of a manager in this situation is to perform due diligence before committing their team to a new project. A careful calculation reveals that the proposed deadline is not feasible.
First, we must determine the total number of available workdays for the team. The project has a due date of 20 business days from today. However, the team has several commitments that make them unavailable during this period. Summing these unavailable days gives us the total time the team cannot work on this new request:
- Projects in progress: 4 days
- Company conference: 1 day
- Holidays: 4 days
- Approved time off: 7 days
Total unavailable business days = 4 + 1 + 4 + 7 = 16 days.
To find the actual available time, we subtract the unavailable days from the total project timeline:
20 total business days – 16 unavailable business days = 4 available business days.
The project is expected to take 5 business days to complete, but the team only has 4 business days available. Therefore, it is impossible to meet the deadline under the current circumstances.
The most professional and responsible action is to communicate this reality to the requester immediately. By proactively informing the requester that the timeline is unworkable and providing the data to support this conclusion, Darren manages expectations, maintains transparency, and opens a negotiation for a realistic deadline. Accepting the project without this communication would set the team up for failure, create unnecessary stress, and damage credibility. Requesting overtime is a premature step; the initial action should always be to negotiate the primary constraints like time and scope with the stakeholder.
