• 21 Ways to Excel at Project Management

Getting the Right Resources

Question 10: Do you have enough experienced resources?

Good Practice: A significant contributor to the success of projects is the availability of customer and supplier managers with high levels of experience both in the business and with project delivery, and having them available early. Two or more people equal different backgrounds, professional networks and a healthy debate. Big projects need substantive and appropriate people. The dedicated people provide time to think it through.

The business culture and working practice are often heavily oriented to business functions and are not always conducive to project-based work and teamwork. Getting good people appointed as dedicated resources for projects early is a tough challenge, and some compromise is often necessary. A recent global project agreed to provide people in each area with six-month full-time secondments. In reality, only a tiny minority of areas provided dedicated resources; most people were made available part-time; this resulted in overall timescales being exceeded by six months.

The challenge for the project manager consists of attracting the right resources, forming a cohesive team, keeping the team motivated, meeting individual aspirations and getting the work done - all within scope, cost, time, and customer satisfaction! ¹

Common Mistakes

• Not enough experienced committed resources from the business.
• Appointed resource overcommitted and unable to devote enough time to the project.

Warning Sign: Resource requirements exceed resource availability.

Once the definition, initiation and planning stages are complete, the project moves to the monitoring & control stage.

During the monitoring & control stage, the project manager should answer questions 11, 12 and 13.

Reference

¹ Dhanu Kothari, Getting Work Done: The Human Side of Project Management, 2008.