I'm seeing this happen yet again on a project at work which has been super badly managed, it has been going for ~ 1 year (which is a pretty long time for what it actually is).
The deadline for project completion is 1 October. The due date is approaching quickly and 4 weeks ago, the other teams were telling me their stuff was mostly done and now it's just time for tidy up and bug fixes (which sounded dubious); However, now they're all working extremely long days and weekends just to complete.
So we went from almost being done 4 weeks ago with the finish line just days away, to clearly being under quite a lot of pressure to deliver and obviously still a lot to do.
The other thing is, people seem to be spending time on things that aren't really important and not tackling the actual work.
Maybe a lot of this comes down to stress and fatigue from their expectations not being met which ends up affecting performance.
Are the individual metrics/incentives aligned with progress on the project? Is anyone panicking? Is anyone trying to appease someone else who's panicking, by giving an inaccurate appearance of progress/work? Is anyone stalling for time, while they try to move elsewhere?
Is there a project plan with work breakdown (and interdependencies, and preferably resource allocations) that shows what you've done, and what you still have to do? Are the incomplete tasks broken down to the resolution of 1-2 days, or to hours? Is the plan complete, or is there substantial work to do that doesn't appear in the plan? Is the completion on the plan accurate? How frequently is slippage being checked, and how does that happen? Does anyone have incentive for the plan be inaccurate at this point?
Are people working on unimportant things because they're blocked on important things by dependencies on other people, but don't want to say it?
Is everyone still putting in full effort, and committed to the project success? Or have some given up on the project, and are focused on shielding their careers?
(Even if the project effectively isn't working from a plan, has bad morale and panicking, there are conflicts of interest, etc... it might not be too late for a good manager to rally everyone around an achievable new plan, possibly including revisiting the requirements. Given that the project is in trouble, I suspect it would need believable buy-in from upper management and the "customer" for this project, or people will still feel doomed, rather than focused on making it work.)
The deadline for project completion is 1 October. The due date is approaching quickly and 4 weeks ago, the other teams were telling me their stuff was mostly done and now it's just time for tidy up and bug fixes (which sounded dubious); However, now they're all working extremely long days and weekends just to complete.
So we went from almost being done 4 weeks ago with the finish line just days away, to clearly being under quite a lot of pressure to deliver and obviously still a lot to do.
The other thing is, people seem to be spending time on things that aren't really important and not tackling the actual work.
Maybe a lot of this comes down to stress and fatigue from their expectations not being met which ends up affecting performance.