Getting the Right Resources

Question 10: Do you have enough experienced resources?

21 Ways to Excel at Project Management

Good Practice: A major factor in the success of projects is to make available customer and supplier managers, with high levels of experience in the business and in project delivery and to have these people available early on. Big projects need substantive and appropriate resources.

Dedicated resource provides time to think it through. Two or more people equal different experiences, networks and a healthy debate.

Getting good people appointed as dedicated resources for projects early on is a tough challenge and some compromise is often necessary. For example, a recent global project agreed, at a high-level, to provide people in each area affected on six-month full-time secondments. In reality only a small minority of areas provided dedicated resources; most people were made available part-time; this resulted in overall timescales being exceeded by six months. Often culture and working practice is heavily orientated to 'business functions' and this is not always conducive to project based work and team working.

"The challenge for the project manager consists of attracting the right resources, forming a cohesive team, keeping the team motivated, meeting individual aspirations and getting the work done - all within scope, cost, time, and customer satisfaction!" ¹

Common Mistakes

• Not enough experienced committed resource from the business.
• Appointed resource overcommitted and unable to devote enough time to the project.

Warning Sign! Resource requirements exceed resource availability.

Once the Definition, Initiation and Planning stages are complete the project moves to the Monitoring & Control Stage. Questions 11, 12 and 13 should be answered.

¹ Dhanu Kothari, Getting Work Done: The Human Side of Project Management (15th July 2008).