Project Management Warning Flag 4 – Too Much Time, Too Few People

Project managers know successful projects establish and maintain a balance between the elements of scope, time, and cost. Adding to or depleting any one of these elements necessitates a compensating change in one or both of the other elements; the integrity of the project management triangle being maintained.[wcm_restrict plans=”41152, 25542, 25653″]

But can a project’s scope, time, and cost elements be both in balance – the project management triangle’s integrity established and maintained – and be out of balance at the same time? Absolutely!

Resources are always in short supply. For a given project scope, the project management triangle suggests that resource (cost) shortfalls can be compensated for by extending the project’s time to completion. Doing so, however, not only has a diminishing beneficial impact but in excess will detract from a project and actually increase its costs. This happens because of the thieves of time and speed of change. Specifically:

• work expands to fill the time allotted
• the student syndrome
• multitasking
• rapidly changing internal corporate and external marketplace environment often linked to the speed of change of technology

Thus, as more and more time is added, less and less work gets done; eventually requiring additional resources. And as the time to delivery increases, changes within the company (people, processes, and technology) and marketplace (customer demands, product/service use and competitor positioning, offerings, pricing, and methods) threaten the relevance of the project’s deliverables.

Allotting too much time for a project’s completion enables the thieves of time to rob team members of their productivity and the speed of change to steal the project’s relevance. While not all inclusive, the four lists below, Process-Based Warning Flags, Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors, Potential, Observable Results, and Potential Causes, are designed to help leaders to recognize whether they are allocating an excessive amount of time to their organization’s projects. Only after a problem is recognized and its causes identified can the needed action be taken to move the organization toward improved performance.

Process-Based Warning Flags

• No time reporting process
• No process to collect time to perform data associated with specific project tasks or work orders
• Lack of a rigorous project scope control and/or project change management process
• Methods for monitoring project progress don’t require estimated time until task completion
• Project management processes do not exist to or are ineffective at assessing and determining the project delivery time based on marketplace conditions

Process Execution Warning Flags – Behaviors

• Individuals do not report time to perform specific work activities even if required to do so by procedure
• Individuals consistently report time worked as 8 hours per day or 40 hours per week even if they worked more or less than this amount
• Individuals record time worked from memory once every several days or more
• Executives, managers, and supervisors assign employees to work on several projects simultaneously
• Lack of executive and managerial challenge to time reports
• Lack of executive and managerial challenge to time requirement estimates
• Lack of supervisory oversight and observation of work
• Executive indifference to potential marketplace new and existing challengers regardless of their size

Potential, Observable Results

• Individuals often work on many projects at one time
• Excessive water cooler time, frequent long lunches, late arrivals, and/or early departures all with on schedule, on budget work completion at the desired quality level
• Excessive time spent on personal emails and/or personal phone calls with on schedule, on budget work completion at the desired quality level
• Excessive, perfectionist standards applied to all work with on schedule, on budget work completion
• Deliverables have additional out-of-scope features while being completed on time and on budget
• Projects typically take long periods of time to complete
• Competitor products routinely reach the market first
• Products/Services are often outdated or obsolete when they reach the market

Potential Causes

• Executives and managers are uncomfortable with conflict and avoid challenging employees regarding their work practices
• Executives and managers are not engaged with the workforce and their work practices
• Executives and managers routinely assess a person’s value contribution based on how busy they appear, thereby, encouraging ‘busy work’
• Individual contributor complacency
• Executives and managers underestimate competitors ability to deliver new products and services to the market

Final Thought…

The natural question becomes can a project have too many people and too little time? While the answer is yes, this is much easier to overcome as proper prior planning and resource coordination can overcome this dilemma. The following video provides an example of one such project where a full size home was built in the record time of 3 hours 26 minutes.[/wcm_restrict][wcm_nonmember plans=”41152, 25542, 25653″]

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