Managing Resource Priorities

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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When I first started managing projects, there was a lot of talk about whether resources would be dedicated to a project or would only be allocated for a percentage of their time. If they were only partially allocated, we would then try and determine how that time would be split up—certain days of the week, perhaps mornings versus afternoons, etc.

There aren’t as many conversations like that these days because we expect virtually every employee to juggle multiple priorities, but the need to balance project and other work, or Project A versus Project B, is just as real—and just as important to get right. How do we ensure we provide our team members with a consistent and clear message on how to effectively manage their priorities?

Resourcing roles
Let’s start by considering the different stakeholders in this process, and in particular where accountability lies for ensuring work priorities and allocation is clear. There are at least three stakeholders we need to consider:

1. the functional manager who “owns” the resource
2. the project manager
3. the individual themselves

There may be multiple project managers if the team member is allocated to more than one initiative, which further complicates the picture. When priorities become confused, it is generally because of a lack of alignment …

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