Project Management and Resource Planning: Can we see what’s out there?

Do you remember the last scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark, where the Ark of the Covenant is put in a crate and stored in that huge warehouse with thousands of other crates and boxes?  I remember even as a kid, thinking ‘they went to all of that trouble to get the Ark, and then they are just going to box it up and let it get lost in the warehouse?’  We all know that the whole idea was to ensure that the Ark never saw the light of day again, but it still seemed crazy.

What does this have to do with resource planning or project management?  Well, unfortunately many organizations are so silo’d that none of the divisions or departments know what the others are doing or planning to do.  So, from an enterprise visibility perspective we have the warehouse from Raiders of the Lost Ark full of crates and boxes that contain projects that nobody knows are out there.  How does senior leadership know that the strategic intent of the organization is being accomplished if they can’t see what is being done, from a high-level, across the various operations?  This also creates an inefficient use of organizational resources (money and people) and makes everything take longer than it needs to which leads to project execution failure.

These issues are compounded in organizations where the operations divisions share and rely on the resources in support divisions such as HR, Marketing, Finance, IT, and Strategy to execute their projects.  For the support departments it is important to know who needs them, to do what, and when, so they can plan accordingly.

The first step is to create an inventory of all the projects out there in progress and in the pipeline to be done across the organization.  But be careful here.  You can’t boil the ocean on the first attempt to get this inventory or it will be too big to provide insight.  My advice is to set some parameters for the work efforts/projects you want to track at an enterprise level.  Give the leaders some clear definitions of the types of projects, size, etc that you want to inventory.

Some basic guidelines for defining what items get included in the ‘enterprise’ project inventory:

• Projects must have a clear beginning and end
  • Not day to day operations items
  • When a project moves into production it is no longer a project, it is part of daily operations and work flow
• For the enterprise level visibility, only include projects that need multiple department resources to accomplish
• Enterprise projects to be included should be larger than 80 hours or take longer than 10 business days to complete (again, we don’t want to boil the ocean, so we can’t capture everything that everyone is doing)
• The funding source for the project is not relevant
  • Projects can be OpX, CapX, or not require any funding to accomplish (an example might be a process improvement project that doesn’t need budget, but will take a lot of time for those involved)
  • Don’t let the funding source be a distraction to getting the inventory done…cast a large net in this respect
• A project should be easily tied back to an organizational strategic goal
  • If it isn’t supporting the strategic direction of the organization, ask your self ‘why are we doing it?’

Provide the leaders the guidelines above and then create a tool for them to input their projects.  Make this part as simple as possible.  You don’t want them to run away before you can show them the value.  You only need a few data points initially:  project name, short description, when they want to do it, who they need to help them do it(i.e. HR, IT,..), etc.

There are many tools available that can help with the intake and management of the inventory, but don’t get too hung up on the tools.  I will provide a review of a few of the PM tools out there in a later post.  The important point here is the process and keeping it easy for the leaders.  Even Excel will work just fine initially.

There is a lot of value in just getting to the point where your organizational leaders have a list of projects (inventory) to start each fiscal year showing who is doing what and when.  This creates a sight line across the organization that is invaluable to those who are setting strategy and those who need to operationalize the strategy.  But we are not going to stop the journey here.

I will be covering project scope documentation and resource planning in my next post.  In the meantime, I would love to hear some of your experiences (struggles and successes) with trying to break down the silos in your organizations related to projects.  Provide your comments in the comment section below and let’s learn together.

 

 

Project Management and Resource Planning: What is this stuff and why is it important?

I don’t know about you, but any time someone comes forward with an idea my first questions are ‘why would we do this?’ and ‘what problem are we trying to solve?’.  It is very important for me to understand the underlying problem and proposed solution before I just buy into a new process.  This is especially true if the change looks like it will add a lot of work to my plate.

Too often in business and in life, people are attracted to the new shiny thing(process, approach, product, etc) and want to do it without fully defining the problem.  I will be diving into problem definition in a later blog series, so stay tuned for that.

Project management is hard and people need to really understand why they should tackle such a difficult thing. It needs buy in. It is hard to manage just a single project effectively.  There are so many details to vet, plan, track, and close.  There are challenging personalities to work with within project teams and stakeholders.  There is a lot of change management that needs to take place with most projects.  But before you get to the point where you are kicking off a project, and jumping into the fray to do battle, the project has to bubble to the top of a crowded list of wants and needs within every organization regardless of its size.

When there are multiple projects that are requested in an organization in a given period of time, you are dealing with a project portfolio and that is when things get complicated really quick.

Everyone is fighting for the same limited resources.  There is a finite supply of time available.  Most companies don’t have a never ending supply of money to fund every project that is requested.  And probably the most overlooked resource (which is always in short supply) is the human resource needed to actually do the work to get the project done.

So, simple supply and demand rules should apply, but in my experience are not always applied in a standard and repeatable way.  Usually the squeaky wheels get the grease and those projects with the loudest sponsors get done.  This approach doesn’t serve to further the strategy of the organization.

When its done well, resource planning along with project portfolio management will help to align the efforts across multiple departments and divisions to the achievement of the strategy for the organization.

Effective planning has other benefits that help to enhance the culture and overall execution effectiveness of an organization as well.  Below is a short list of the benefits:

• Creates visibility for all of the leaders and breaks down silos
• Improves teamwork
• Maximizes resource use
• Improves quality
• Aids in change management
• Reduces and controls cost
• Develops an organizational roadmap

These are only a few of the many benefits.  I would love to hear more reasons from you as to why resource planning is important.  Please provide your feedback in the comments section below so we can learn together.

In my next blog I will begin to build the framework for building an effective resource planning culture and process for your organization.  Starting with a process to inventory the demand.

Does enterprise project and resource management have to be this hard?

This picture may look a mess, but believe it or not, it represents a huge milestone on my long journey towards setting up an enterprise project management and resource planning framework.  The journey was one that taught me lot about why project management at an enterprise level is so difficult to do (let alone do it well).

Think about trying to manage a single project, with dozens of dependencies all over the place. Project tasks and resources collide with each other left and right,  constantly needing to be addressed.  Layer on an aggressive timeline and budgetary pressures, and it is easy to see why being good at managing a project can be hard.  To be a good PM you have to have many skills. One of the most important ones is the ability to keep all of the plates spinning throughout the project, so the risks and issues are kept at a minimum, ensuring you are able to deliver the project on time and under budget.  There are competing priorities that pull your resources away constantly, so you are always herding the cats (your resources or people) back to the project, and the tasks at hand.  You need to be able to prioritize the tasks using a number of different criteria and methods, and then communicate those priorities to the project team and stakeholders.  This is tough work that can be extremely complex.

Now, take that complex ball of craziness that is scoping, planning, and managing one project, and multiply it by 250!  Welcome to the wonderful world of standing up an enterprise project management office.  Ever tried to untangle a ball of Christmas lights that have been stuffed in a box in your garage for a year?  Well, getting a project and resource planning process stood up from scratch, at an enterprise level, can make you feel like Clark Griswold trying to untangle that ball of Christmas lights…only there generally is not a “Rusty” to hand it off to.

This blog will be a place where I tackle topics like enterprise project management, IT operations, Cyber Security, and general leadership, in an effort to simplify them. My first series will focus on project management and resource planning.  I hope you will join me for the ride.