Catching publication slippage ten weeks earlier

The problem

Two congress abstracts and three manuscripts were running with inconsistent owners, differing assumptions about data-cut dates, and no shared view of how long author review would actually take. Slippage was only visible once a deadline had already been missed.

What we did

Built a dependency-based publication plan: author agreements captured up front, explicit review windows, disclosure checks as a gate, and red/amber/green milestone rules that triggered on the dependency rather than on the final date.

What changed

Critical-path slippage surfaced ten weeks earlier than it would have. Four risks received named owners, and one low-priority manuscript was resequenced deliberately instead of quietly missing its window.

How it was measured

"Ten weeks earlier" compares the date the dependency rule flagged amber against the date the milestone itself would have been missed under the previous plan. It is a detection interval, not a schedule saving.

Artifacts

Publication plan · author tracker · milestone dashboard · congress planner