Uri TeitlerHead of EPMO| CommonWealth BankKingsford, Australia
We are struggling to determine the best approach to deal with large vacancy rates across the portfolio impacting our forecasts .. how have you managed it?
Scenario: Project Manager raises resource demand to fulfil requirements .. this directly flows through to the financial forecasts.
Complication: Due to a number of reasons including COVID, attrition etc the organisation is struggling to meet the resourcing demand. At the moment we currently have 1800 FTE vacancies in our Delivery teams.
Implications: The project managers say if they remove the demand then they won't get their resources allocated to them. Finance say their forecasts are too high as they are not accounting for the vacancies and run-rate is lower then forecasts.
Something has to give, and you need to work together and answer some often difficult questions to figure out the best compromises.
On occasion, you may creatively find a way to complete the work much more efficiently. That is especially difficult when the organization is already overloaded because creative solutions also take time and money.
Sometimes you may be able to de-scope some projects (less work total) or extend their completion dates (flatter staffing curve) to reduce the staffing requirements at least temporarily.
You may also need to decide what projects are paused or even terminated. That requires setting priorities across all projects to manage cash flow based on the most business value. It may impact customer and supplier contracts, but if you can't figure out what you can do successfully with what you have available, you may end up failing on everything instead. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Uri
in one case, we aggregated the demand of the project in the portfolio and came up with more than double the demanded hours than available and from experience necessary. We concluded that centralized resource allocation is a waste of time.
Resources should be managed at the lowest level possible. Upper levels should strive to support lower levels and project future demand on reality, not estimates.
Critical chain concepts could help with this.
Teams are able to optimize work with their available members.
We installed a 3 level cadence to take a handle at this: teams/projects manage daily, departments biweekly and the overall organization bimonthly.
Thomas Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
1-Being more efficient. 2-Adjusting demand to capacity. Saving Changes...
I'd double down on Thomas's recommendation to investigate critical chain, but I'd broaden that by saying you should look into Steve Tendon and Daniel Doiron's work on Tameflow which incorporates Goldratt's ToC into work management.
The tricky part is getting your leadership team to accept that they need to "cut their coat according to their cloth". In other words, only start as many projects concurrently as can be successfully delivered with the skills you have available and have the leadership team focus on which projects will give you the most bang for the most (constrained) buck.
Stéphane ParentSelf Employed / Semi-retired| Leader MakerPrince Edward Island, Canada
As project manager, it behooves us to make sure we plan on completing our projects on time and on budget; not, ahead of time and under budget. Any excess resources allocated to one project are resources that cannot be used in another one. Saving Changes...
Denathayalan RamasamyChief Technology Officer| Atal Incubation Centre -CIICChennai, Tamilnadu, India
The portfolio manager should intervene and adapt the strategy & governance plan accordingly. Should highlight as a risk & adapt risk & stakeholder engagement planning sheet on project management Saving Changes...
