An occasional pressure increase and overtime can be useful tactics to keep people focused and increase the perception that their work is important, but prolonged pressure is always a mistake. It has been shown that overtime is offset by fewer productive hours, or under-time.
It makes good sense for you as a project manager to take a defensive posture in most areas of risk. These are common risk mitigation techniques a project manager should use. There is one area, though, where defensiveness will always backfire: You cannot protect yourself against your own people’s incompetence. If your own people are not up to the job at hand, you will fail.
