Are You Making This Resource Capacity Mistake?

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.

  PMO   Resource Management   Scheduling  

When I’m speaking to groups of people, I sometimes tell a story about a company that I used to work for. It complained every year that it failed to deliver all of its approved projects. The suggestion from leadership was that the PMO, project managers and teams weren’t working well enough to deliver the work, no matter how much was invested in training and tools.

Every year, the message was that we had to do better, we had to increase the number of projects completed. The expectation was that every approved initiative would be delivered within the business cycle.

Twelve months later of course, same story. Some work not completed, executives not happy, PMOs and project managers frustrated.

What was the issue preventing these projects from being completed? Simple: There weren’t enough resources. Or more accurately, leadership was approving far more initiatives than the organization had the ability to deliver. The problem wasn’t in delivery, it was in selection and approval.

In any given year, this scenario can occur to any business. Problems with preliminary estimates, changes in operating conditions, shifting priorities, etc. can all create circumstances where there simply isn’t the ability to deliver all approved work.

I also know of some organizations who consciously approve too much work to ensure that they have a backlog of …

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