Peebo.net

Loyal readers,

I wanted to post a quick apology for the lack of fresh and exciting content this past week or so. I blame my job. It seems my workplace has a little problem with resource allocation.

My work is project based. When a new project is initiated a project plan is developed that outlines all the tasks necessary to complete that project. However, the amount of time given to complete the project is driven not just by the tasks being performed but also by the client. Furthermore, these clients are always guaranteed to have very… “ambitious” timelines. Thus, the pace of work dictated by the project plan is often, let us say, hectic.

Once the project plan is established, (human) resources are assigned. Certain key resources (i.e. the ones that do actual work) are allocated to a project at close to 100%. This means that if the resource spends 100% of their time working on the tasks assigned to them in the project plan then they should be able meet all project milestones and help bring the project to fruition on time and on budget. This sounds good until we recall that the timeline is not being driven by the tasks that actually have to be performed, but by an arbitrary deadline mandated by the client. Therefore, that “close to 100%” allocation starts creeping up to 100% (there went lunch, checking personal email, water cooler chat) or even exceeding 100% (a “man day” begins to exceed 8 hours).

Here comes the rub. . .

When you work with multiple clients –each with their own set of projects– you’ll find that sometimes your allocation projections across client engagements can go out of sync. There is slippage. There is overlap. Thus, right now I’m working on five things at the same time. Somewhere there are spreadsheets (note the plural–that’s part of the problem) with my various allocations and they read something like: 100%, 50%, 10%, 50%, and 0%. (The “0%” is for a project that is complete according to the project plan. Funny thing is, it’s not really finished yet.)

Do the math and note the time of this post.

I am such a sucker.

posted by peebo on Thursday, August 26th, 2004 at 2:25 am
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