scheduling issues

Estimating

Chuck Little Agile Coach| Leanintuit Sarnia, Ontario, Canada

The issue is a bit complex, albeit probably very common in smaller organizations, but I'll try to be brief.

We have a small team that handles new projects (typically 3 - 4 weeks per project) as well as ongoing support. The workload is large and the funnel is small and what I'm having problems with is making sure new projects stay on track while we're able to stay in 'react mode' for product problems as well as handle day to day support.

There are systems and processes in place that are working well enough, but I was curious how others in this same type of environment handle it. I'm basically at the point where I'm putting in far too much padding to anticipate the un-known support factor, which I can ballpark, but there are days when "drop everything and put out this fire" happens.

Sorry for such a vague comment/question, but I really don't have any PM peers at work to bounce this type of stuff off.

Posted: Nov 20, 2007 9:37 PM

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Donald Hennington New York, Ny, United States

Chuck, all organizations struggle with too few resources and too much work. So don't feel you need to apologize for your team... In my organization, we had a similar situation, when I asked my management team where the staff spent their time they didn't have an acceptable answer. We instituted project level weekly time recording and discovered why we were only closing half of the project load - only half our time was being expended there! What a surprise! Understanding where time is being expended will help you identify two things: how much time to allocate to new projects; how much staff you need to perform the work. Metrics can really help identify where your process needs adjusting. BUT - try not to fall into the measure everything trap - only those areas where you believe the team will derive benefit, and then only while you need to perform the adjustment...Good Luck, Don

Posted: Nov 21, 2007 8:40 AM

Chuck Little Agile Coach| Leanintuit Sarnia, Ontario, Canada

Thanks Don. I've put in time tracking on PS activities (support, client change requests) and for new project bugs, but just not new project activities yet. That's the part I'm finding really difficult to manage at the moment. Can anyone recommend a good book on resource management?

Posted: Nov 21, 2007 9:21 AM

Evan Sanders Project Manager| Health Catalyst Ut, United States

I think you're already taking a good step by adding in time to account for the unexpected. In my environment, I face a similar situation where about 50% of the team's time can be spent on unscheduled items. I usually double or triple the base estimates we do, to account for people working on multiple priorities. I have found this method to be successful, in that the people requesting the projects understand how busy we are, and would rather see results on time. One other thing you may want to try is a quick daily stand-up meeting with your team, to confirm what items they are working on. This will allow you to adjust priorities if you see that too much or not enough time is being spent on the items that are important for a given week or month. Good luck!

Posted: Nov 26, 2007 4:00 PM

Chuck Little Agile Coach| Leanintuit Sarnia, Ontario, Canada

Thanks Evan. We do a weekly team meeting as well as daily stand-ups. It really does help a lot. What I find really amusing is that my last 3 'PM related' jobs have been for startup companies with no existing PMs so it was pretty tough to learn on my own. I'm glad I stumbled upon this site, I've learned quite a bit here.

Posted: Nov 26, 2007 4:12 PM

Selva Saravana Puvananthiran Delivery Lead Senior Manager| Accenture Solutions Private Limited Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

I completely agree with Donald.

I remember a similar situation in one of my previous projects where I was a team member. Like you mentioned, there used to be a lot of "fire fighting activities" and some "ad hoc" requests from the clients on a daily basis.

What my manager did was acting as a "Firewall", if you will, between the clients and our team. This really enabled the team members to perform well in their day-to-day activities. Also, we made tremendous efforts in fixing either the process or systems or both to provide a stable environment for the users to work with the systems. This eliminated the "fire fighting activities" a lot.

HTMS(Hope this makes sense).

Magesh.

Posted: Dec 14, 2007 6:59 PM

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