Uncovering Bogus Full-Time Resources

 

In today's change-focused world, effective resource management is difficult. One problem: You expect certain key resources to work full time each week, but instead they end up burning time in other activities. These activities may be supported by the organization. They may even be other important projects. The problem is that you actually end up with a "unknown" part-time worker.

Now, if you just knew an accurate number of hours to plan for these key resources, you would be more confident that you can meet planned deadlines. If the resources actually knew how many hours they would devote to your project you would be lucky. The answer to your problem is a series of questions.

Choose from among these questions to ask key resources to determine work hours per week or month, or use these questions to inspire your own.

• What regular meetings do you now have that are outside of this project?
• Do you expect to continue with these meetings?
• What competing workstreams are you working on now?
• Do you participate in any organizational business or process improvement efforts?
• How much time is involved in these activities each week/month?
• Do you have a role as SME for parallel (competing) projects or change efforts?
• What do you generally do in these initiatives? 
• How many hours max in any week/month have you spent on this project? Expect in the future?
• What has been your experience so far in terms of hours per week and flexibility?
• When are your fixed times on these activities we cannot use you (hours, days, weeks)?

Two more points...Even if you have just a few questions, it may appear like some kind of investigation, so preface your conversation with the individual in such a way that these questions are not threatening but are seen as proper planning so as to not place undue stress on the individual. It may be that in your project that these questions need to be asked by team leads or others. Make sure they know what questions to ask to get an accurate picture of the resource's availability.