Project Management

Predicting Human Productivity

Lanfranco Fiorentino, PMP is an Air Force Officer with a broad range of experience ranging from search and rescue to remotely piloted aircrafts passing from airflift. He has an MBA in aviation and works with several projects both in the military and civilian world. Professionalism, honesty and strong team play are his key characteristics.

Well, this might be the worst way to begin writing an essay…but here we are, talking once again about human resources. Read it one more time: human resources! Seriously? Since when are men and women “resources”? Could that just be it? A wrong approach to a reality made of flesh and bones rather than steel and bolts?

“Resources” sounds like something that can be used and disposed of, a machine, a raw material, anything that can be turned on or off, or simply used at our pleasure. If that is so, then most speculations on productivity are correct: take a person, assign her/him a productivity value (100%?) and put her/him at work estimating the required time to complete the task. Just like a machine. If my factory can produce 10 cars a day, I won’t be wrong estimating it will take 10 days to produce 100 cars. My factory, though, will definitely not be keen to experience a “bad day” or have family issues or any other type of emotion that could positively or negatively affect its performance.

Now, what you may be expecting is a psychological essay centered on dealing with assigned resources and a sympathetic approach to their peculiarity: human beings. Not really.

The purpose of this article is to present my view on how the productivity…


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It's like deja vu all over again.

- Yogi Berra

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