| Resource
Management in Multi Project Organizations
Part 1: Tactics for Increasing Resource Effectiveness
by Dr. Ajai
Kapoor
Resource Managers
(or functional managers) in multi project organizations
are primarily responsible for:
-
Resource Effectiveness:
doing work in a timely and effective manner, to
maximize project speed and throughput
- Professional
Development and Satisfaction: Provide ample
opportunities and options to technical resources
for professional development
- Capacity
Management: Maintain the right levels of
capacity, which in a growth environment requires
minimizing the time between hiring resources and
making them productive
The above picture
classifies the time spent while working on projects.
There is time spent doing the work. There is time
spent on INTERRUPTIONS (waiting for issues to be resolved,
decisions to be made, priorities to be clarified;
multi-tasking on other higher priority work...). Finally,
there is time consumed by PARKNSON’S LAW (work
expands to fill the time available).
In this article we discuss
the tactics that Resource Managers can use to contain
Interruptions and Parkinson’s Law, thus increasing
resource effectiveness. Some of these may also help
with professional development and capacity management,
items that we will discuss in detail in a follow-on
article.
- Task management
- Issue resolution
- Cross-functional
coordination
- Dedicated resources
for troubleshooting
- Dedicated resources
for coordination
- Resource pooling
Task Management
In order to have the high
throughput, the following mode of execution is ideal:
- High focus on one task
at a time in execution
- Pro-active and early
identification of issues
- High quality work with
scope that is subordinated to project needs
The people who can ensure
that the organization displays this behavior are frontline
managers, or Task Managers. It is up to Resource Managers
to establish a good task management process. The process
needs to protect people from micro-management while
allowing the work to proceed at a fast pace. Using
the task management process as a way to transfer experience
and mentor new employees also minimizes the time between
a resource being hired and being productive.
Issue Resolution
In most organizations,
issue resolution – especially when it involves
many people or senior managers – can become
a bottleneck. Project environments are riddled with
unknowns, whether it is uncertainty of scope change,
technical uncertainty of work, or uncertainty about
problems from vendors and customers that cannot be
anticipated. The pace of issue resolution and decision-making
effectively dictates the productivity of all the resources.
If decision-making and issue resolution are effective
and fast, the interruptions to work will be fewer
and people more focused. When this pace is slow the
number of interruptions increase and time is lost
waiting and also in the lost sense of urgency.
It is a Resource
Manager's job to ensure that the roles and responsibilities
in the organization are set-up to increase the pace
of decision making. There are many ways to exploit
this precious capacity. Some of these are described
below.
- In some
situations cross-functional participation is required
to resolve issues. There are delays caused because
the right set of people are not all available at
the same time. Scheduling conflicts can easily delay
decisions by weeks. An effective tactic in these
cases is to create regular and frequent meetings
of the right people who are available to review
issues and make decisions as needed. The change
from scheduling these people's time in advance for
specific issues to being able to walk into a room
where they are holding office hours at regular times
can significantly accelerate the pace of decision
making.
- In many
situations, there are troubleshooting experts who
can resolve difficult issues. Typically, these people
are assigned to projects just like any other resources.
Informally though, other people access their time
to resolve issues causing them to be overloaded
and delaying the issue resolution process across
the organization. Taking these experts off specific
projects and getting them proactively involved in
all projects can dramatically increase throughput.
- Creating
an organization-wide point of contact to triage
support needs coming in from the outside helps isolate
the key resources from interruptions and work that
is urgent, but can be handled by other less skilled
resources. Task Managers can be such people.
Resource Pooling
We know that in planning,
pipelining of projects (staggering project starts
based on the most limiting resources) will minimize
peaks and valleys in workload. However, even if the
plan might have resources and work perfectly matched,
in execution the uncertainties can quickly cause resources
and workload to get out of synch. Such non-instantaneous
availability of resources can create long delays in
projects.
There are two
ways of dealing with the situation: either earmark
enough excess capacity to each project, or pool resources
across projects. Pooling of resources can provide
surge capacity at much lower costs, and also stimulates
professional development by allowing people to work
on multiple projects simultaneously. The key to making
resource pooling work is to ensure that the project-specific
knowledge and expertise can still be maintained.
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