Managing ‘Other Duties as Assigned’

Andy Jordan is President of Roffensian Consulting S.A., a Roatan, Honduras-based management consulting firm with a comprehensive project management practice. Andy always appreciates feedback and discussion on the issues raised in his articles and can be reached at [email protected]. Andy's new book Risk Management for Project Driven Organizations is now available.

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A colleague of mine is currently working on a large-scale program where two groups have just realized that a piece of work needs to occur that doesn’t fit into either of their individual projects, but where the projects can’t properly integrate without it. There isn’t the time nor budget to hire additional resources to do the work, and while the work is somewhat technical, there is sufficient ability on my colleague’s team to do the work--albeit not optimally.

His question to me was simple: How do you manage through that situation when the people doing the work are outside of their comfort zone, it’s not what they were hired to do and oversight can only be somewhat effective because the expertise to manage any better simply isn’t available?

I am sure some of you will already be saying that he should push back and not agree to take on the additional, unplanned work. Technically you’re not wrong, but in reality the work has to get done and there are no other realistic alternatives. There will be support provided by other project teams, but the bottom line is that the work has to happen if the project is going to succeed, and the right expertise simply isn’t available.

There is undoubtedly plenty of opportunity to learn lessons for the next project, but that won’t solve the immediate problem. The project team is …

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