Managing Constraints: Looking for Abundance?

Suresh is a qualified, chartered cost accountant and a PMP with more than 30 years of experience in organizations engaged in various industries, such as ceramic tiles, automobiles and engineering.

  Innovation   Leadership  

Project managers are always looking to manage resources all the time during various stages of a project lifecycle. The worst nightmare of a project manager is a resource constraint or scarcity of resources while fulfilling the project objectives.

I am trying to make PMs think differently when dealing with constraints or scarcity. Many would agree with me that a constraint is a limitation that materially affects your ability to act. People will have different responses while facing constraints:

• A “victim” looks for a way out and pulls back when constraints appear, or they panic and freeze.
• A “neutralizer” looks for a workaround to deal with the constraints, which may not be cost effective.
• A “transformer” views it as an opportunity and builds solutions through innovative ways.

How you frame the questions
Let me illustrate this with an example. In 2006, when automaker Audi sought to win the legendary 24-hour Le Mans road race, its engineers didn’t ask how to make their car faster than anyone else’s. They asked how they could win if their car wasn’t the fastest. Their radical solution was to design and build a high-performance diesel engine. The revolutionary Audi R10 TDI was no faster than its competition, but its …

Please log in or sign up below to read the rest of the article.