Projects can die in the starting blocks for a very solvable issue of overly cautious resource management.  Adding project resource timing is a crucial success criteria.  I’ve seen projects fail to start because the resources are not secured quickly enough.  I see this more with cautious resource procurement processes that are trying to get one type of resource and when secured, they go after the next one in the list.  The problem is that often a request takes 3 weeks+ from start to finish and the first resource may not be available when the last one is finally confirmed.  The process continues to look for the first resource again.

These long resource procurement phases would not work for a small business in the fight to be competitive. Most companies are in a productivity enhancement program these days that demand higher throughput with less. All companies and government need to embrace the “get-er-done” attitude.  I’m surprised to still see evidence of slow resourcing.  A past mentor of mine was so conscious of wasted time when a meeting of 6 people started 5 minutes late that he would comment “We just lost 1 hour from our project budget”. Let’s face it… when you run a project with 100+ people you need to be organized and on time or you risk burning your budget.  On the other hand.. a project team of 100+ who are crisp in their habits and functions becomes a force in the industry.

I used to work in a projectized environment where management would resource 400+ resources each month to move them from team to team as the project work demanded.  To someone who comes from a functional background this probably sounds like a crazy thing to do… but we made it work.  Sometimes project teams would grow or shrink by 25%.  In a particularly difficult ramp up we would grow a team by 50%.  This sounds like a recipe for disaster if not managed correctly.  We did a lot in advance like held resource ramp-up sessions, moved people’s desks to be co-located with their new team (where it made sense), got them access to systems when they needed them, tried to get people who had worked on the team in the past… This was not a perfect model and it did raise some challenges.  After making this approach work, I find a cautious resourcing procurement process too slow and a waste of time and money.

Use the comment section below to share your examples of great resource timing or perhaps where delays impacted the plans.

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Ron is a Project Manager and occasional blogger with Chalder Consulting Inc. www.chalder.ca

Linkedin: linkedin.com/in/rondsmith

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