Managing Resources

Right person, Wrong role.

Her eyes just about rolled back in her head as she heard the project sponsor list off the named resources for the project that was about to begin. Here we go again, she thought. There’s no way we’re going to pull this off.

“You’re making that face again,” the guy to her left whispered, as he leaned closer “what’s your problem? Why are you so hostile all the sudden?”

“I’m just so sick of us having the same stupid conversations over and over. Didn’t you just hear? ‘You Know Who’ is assigned as lead for our team. Again. That’s so annoying.”

“Hey, don’t be mean,” he offered, “they’re really good at what they do, and they’ve been here forever. Why are you so sure it will go badly?”

“Because it always does!” she muttered, drawing an exclamation mark on her paper for emphasis.

Ever witnessed or been part of one of these conversations? Either out loud or in your head? Do you know why these conversations are so common?

Role Responsibility Mismatch – is it a capability or a capacity problem?

The second leading cause of project failure has to do with role/responsibility mismatch. We simply don’t have the right person in the right role for a particular body of work.

Now one way that could play out is a communication problem. For example, I didn’t show up to do that because I didn’t know you wanted me to. But that feels like a communication problem…which happens to be the leading cause of project failure in its own right, and we address that elsewhere. So we’re going to spend more time here on the other two ways that role/responsibility mismatch shows up: capability and capacity.

What’s the difference?

Capacity: Think of capacity as the amount of stuff your team members can do and can manage. Imagine each team member has a cup, and that cup has a finite amount of space in it. Some tasks take up more cup space than others, and because of that, we need to keep in mind what tasks we are assigning and how much space our team members have in their cups. If we need us to hold four quarts of liquids right now, and between you and me, together we only have one quart of capacity, then we have a problem, and we don’t have enough capacity on this team to do the work that needs to be done. Let’s say we have to carry four quarts of hot soup from point A to point B. If between us, we can only carry one quart, and we don’t have time for two trips, then we’ve definitely got a capacity problem.

Capability: Think of capability as the skill set and the type of work that an individual can do with the resources and tools they have available. Following our kitchen metaphor a colander does not have the capability to hold large quantities of water (unless that water happens to be in a solid state, such as a block of ice or a pile of ice cubes, and then, only temporarily until they melt). If instead of a cup, I have a colander – even if it’s a four-quart colander. The capacity of four quarts isn’t at all helpful here, because colanders don’t hold soup. I have a capability problem. The holes in my colander let the soup through.

If our project requires a capacity greater than our human resources can bring to the table, then we have a gap, and the project will struggle.

If our project requires capabilities different than the humans who have been assigned, then we have a gap, and the project will struggle.

Let’s get out of the kitchen for a second and look at some real examples I’ve seen.

• -He’s in IT, so he can do any of the development work we need. Yikes! IT professionals are not pencils – each is a unique, divinely created human, with their own set of skills and backgrounds. A front end developer is not the same as a back end developer; someone who specializes in IT security does not have the same skillset as someone who is an expert in cloud architecture. Someone who is an expert in data analytics is not going to have the same expertise or skillset as someone who is a web designer for online user experience.
• -She’s in marketing, so she’ll do the marketing stuff. Yikes! Marketing analytics, graphic design, marketing strategy, social media, short form content, email marketing, B2B, B2C, outbound call generation, workflows, advertising, digital marketing – there are so many different areas of specialization in marketing, it is unfair to imagine that someone who has one area of knowledge or expertise would be able to represent the whole discipline.

You get the idea…

Let’s talk capacity now for a moment.

Capacity is one of those things that becomes obviously and urgently painful when individuals are allocated across multiple projects. A little bit of their time goes to project A, a little bit to project B, a little bit to project C, and before you know it, the expectation is that they are spending 180% of their time across all of these projects. That’s simply not reasonable! Their cup is overflowing, and not in the good way.

And here are some cases where capacity gets even more painful

• Seasonal pressures – holidays, peak seasons or busy seasons, and seasonal weather conditions can be things that impact capacity fairly predictably. While you don’t know for sure when the snow will hit, it’s fair to imagine that there will be a couple of snow days in January or February in Iowa.   These kinds of seasonal pressures and out-of-office things (snow days cause parents to miss work when they have to stay home with their kids; holidays cause more people to be out of the office) reduce capacity
• Unplanned Absences – In addition to the stuff we can sort of predict, there’s also the stuff that’s unpredictable: Illnesses, family emergencies, or other unexpected absences can disrupt the flow of a project. Unplanned absences can reduce capacity, so good risk management here involves having backup team members who can step in or adjust workloads as needed. This is why having very small teams is riskier for the health of the project. If there are only two people on the project team, and both get sick, who’s left to do the work?

So what do we do about these things? Now that we know that role/responsibility mismatch is a key fail point, a great resolution is to plan in advance to avoid it.

• If we know that someone is already over extended, don’t assign them as a critical resource on a new project.
• If we know that someone is nearly extended, then assign someone else as a backup for them if they are critical to a project.
• If we have a critical role for a project, review the person being assigned to the role and make sure that everyone understands what is being asked of that person, so we’re all sure they’re the right person for the role.
• If we have specific seasonal pressures coming up, make sure the capacity of the project has been reviewed to address those.

Once we’ve planned in advance to avoid it, we also keep tabs on it to make sure it isn’t a problem as we move forward. This can involve regular check-ins with the humans involved to make sure they’re still clear on the roles and they still have the capacity they need to do what’s expected, and that expectations haven’t shifted along the way.

Let’s go back to our the conversation we were overhearing…

“Yeah, part of why it kept going so badly in the past is because they were always so over extended. They kept getting pulled into literally everything,” he started

“Do you literally mean literally?” she interrupted, laughing.

“Well, okay, maybe not literally,” he smiled, “but I had lunch with them the other day, and they were so much different than they’d been before! They’d had a conversation with their leader where they’d finally spoken up about being on so many projects. They said that they were assigned to over 23 different projects at the same time, and they couldn’t keep up!

“When they went to their boss with the list and asked for help prioritizing, their boss agreed that the list was unreasonable, so they worked out a plan to assign a whole bunch of the projects over to others on the team who could handle them, and now they’re assigned to just a few of them.

“Now that they’ve been assigned to this one, I’m sure this one will be different! Just give them a chance!”

“Wow, I had no idea, thanks for saying something,” she said, her voice softening a little. In her head she’d been inspired by the courage it took to ask for help prioritizing, and really inspired by the idea that there was help to be found.

Overall, we hope that through our real-world examples, and our tried and tested tips, we here at Your Clear Next Step have better equipped you to ensure that the next project you work on goes smoothly. If today’s blog topic resonates with you, check out our blogs and on-demand webinars. And if advancing your project management skills is something you’re passionate about, you’re the perfect candidate for our Change Makers Certification Program! Reach out on social media or through our website—we’d love to connect with you.