One of the most important questions we have to answer when we are proposing a project to a client is “how long will it take?” This one question has major implications for project costs, it can inform other parts of a client's policy strategy, and it is the most important part of determining what a project’s scope will be.
Because this question is so important, I wanted to spend some time discussing it from the perspective of an analyst. In this blog post, I talk about why timelines are important, how we build our timelines at Scioto Analysis, and what happens when unforeseen circumstances cause timelines to change.
Why is timeliness so important in policy analysis?
Unlike academic research where the primary goal is to increase our understanding of a topic, the goal of policy analysis is to inform policy decisions. In some cases where a policy analysis is purely exploratory, this doesn’t make much of a difference. However, when there is an active policy proposal being considered, or if there is a date set for a vote on a policy, analysts can sometimes be under immense time pressure. The deadline is often determined by the policy process, regardless of how much time we might want to spend on the research.
This creates a tradeoff that all policy analysis must reckon with: longer projects may lead to more confidence in results, but shorter projects leave more time for results to be communicated and digested by decision makers. There is almost always another question we could investigate or another assumption we could test. The challenge is deciding when that additional research would meaningfully improve a decision and when it would simply delay getting useful information to the people who need it.
How Scioto Analysis handles timelines
While every project is unique, there are general principles that we have developed over our years of experience that help us when determining how long we should spend on a project. A useful timeline needs to account for the entire process, from gathering data to reviewing the results and explaining what they mean. Finishing the calculations is only part of finishing the analysis.
As an example, we tend to begin almost all of our cost-benefit analyses with a 12-week timeline in mind. Based on our experience, this gives us enough time to research a topic in sufficient detail, while still prioritizing getting results out quickly enough to allow time for the information to be communicated and absorbed. That starting point gives us something concrete to discuss with a client as we determine what their particular project requires.
When we are developing project timelines with clients, we try to strike a balance between time and depth. We know approximately how much time is needed to perform each part of a policy analysis sufficiently, while our clients know when they need a report completed and how detailed they want it to be. Identifying the most important questions early helps us build a scope that fits the time available. We try to balance these needs so that we are providing our clients with as much information as they need, within a timeline and budget that works for them. This not only creates the most useful reports for our clients, but also ensures that the policymakers who may make decisions based on this research have enough time to fully understand the analysis we provide.
What happens if there is an unforeseen complication?
While careful planning and preparation can reduce the risk of delays in a project, there always arise some moments where unforeseen circumstances crop up. Maybe the dataset you planned on using wasn’t available for all the years you needed it, maybe the whole project team caught the flu and can’t work for a week. When this happens, there are often two main options:
The first option is to extend the project timeline. This can work for those types of projects that are more exploratory or don’t have hard external deadlines that must be met. This option should only be considered if there is enough time for the audience of the report to receive and digest the information even if they receive it later. A policy analysis doesn’t do any good if policymakers only learn about it after they’ve made their policy decision!
The second option is to reduce the project scope. If there are extraneous parts of a project that the analysts and clients agree are not likely going to lead to a significantly different outcome, or if there are sections that are not directly related to the main policy question, then it could be more valuable to get the audience of a report less information in a more timely manner. The key is to preserve the work needed to answer the central question credibly. A narrower analysis can still be useful, provided we clearly explain what it covers and what remains unanswered.
Because Scioto Analysis is a small team, this risk is front of mind whenever we create a project timeline. As a result, we always like to include an extra flex week into our timelines in order to account for any delays that might crop up. For most projects, this ends up being an extra week of editing and polishing that makes the final reports even stronger, but it has come in handy for addressing project delays as well.
One of the advantages of being a small team is that we can be more flexible and adjusting to these challenges is easier than it might otherwise be. We have the ability to change around our internal workflows as needed to respond to these types of challenges. Because of this, we are extremely proud of the fact that in our nearly eight years of operation, we have not missed a major project deadline. Meeting those deadlines matters because our work is most valuable when it reaches decision makers while they still have time to act on it.
