As we know, there are many aspects to the reasons why projects fail or are simply delayed. The underlying causes are a multifaceted story where there are many different opinions. But what is clear is that business-oriented and "customer-oriented" project managers are more successful. Delays, on the other hand, are a bit more straightforward and spell: lack of resources. At least that is a common excuse from project managers. At the same time, there is a management function that complains that it is difficult to plan for new projects because it does not know when it will get resources from existing projects. The problem often stems from the fact that the original plans have long since become obsolete due to delays, changing needs and requirements or other reasons. Project managers want to gather momentum and drive towards an unclear goal but cannot define their need when the requirement is to deliver a plan against a breakdown of work into activities. Since management now has no basis for decision, a deadlock, also called Moment 22, occurs.
The required solution represents a paradigm shift in some respects. Namely, not planning, which is found in some agile methodologies such as Scrum where planning of resource hours is replaced by an experience-driven assessment of the capacity to complete tasks. The problem is that the scope of the tasks is not measured in hours and thus neither is the effort of the team. It becomes difficult to plan for vacancies and when someone deviates. On the other hand, it is possible to plan the time that each person will participate in a particular team or project on a monthly or weekly basis without having to specify activities. A further simplification is that there is now no need to report by activity, but rather the overall performance of the team. Another benefit is that the work can be evaluated using the performance evaluation method.
A future blog will deal with a model for cyclical resource planning
At the pen/Georg
Comments on what I write, questions and more are welcome at georg.silber@ln4solutions.com or call me directly at 0708 502 191.