Project resource management risks are often overlooked when it comes to putting your risk register together, but here are 5 risks to consider when securing your team.
1. It Takes Longer Than Expected To Get The Team
Your project plan probably says when your project is due to start. And if it doesn’t, your project sponsor is sure to have an idea, probably as soon as possible! However, you can’t always control how long it is going to take to recruit all the members of the team, and a major risk to your resource management is that it takes longer than you expect.
This could be because there are political reasons to finding the right person, or just that it takes a long time to get the approval of line managers and for them to agree to release their staff. It could be because you don’t have the right people in-house and you have to hire them externally. If staff have a notice period to give to their previous employer it could be anything up to around 3 months before they are available to work for you.
The danger here is that by taking extra time to recruit the full team you cannot start the project at the time you expect. You may still be able to start some work and have to delay the start of other work because you do not have the relevant team members. Make sure you flag this risk to your sponsor as soon as you realize that you are struggling to get the team in place.
2. Key Team Members Are Only Part-Time
You may find that a critical member of the project team is only available to work on your project on a part-time basis. This sometimes happens when skills in the company are limited and there are two high profile or critical projects taking place at the same time. The key resource then has to stretch his or her availability over both projects, meaning that they are only available to you for some of the time. It might get even worse during busy periods on the other project, as their availability may drop below 50%.
There isn’t much you can do about this except try to find someone else to replace the key resource. Often that isn’t possible, so plan extra time into the schedule to enable him or her to complete their work over a longer period of time.
3. Not Enough Staff Available
You may have scheduled your project based on being able to get enough people, especially for busy periods like testing, when you may have to bring in extra pairs of hands to get the work done. However, when it comes to those tasks, you could find it difficult to get the extra people you need.
Generally, project teams are often having to do more with fewer resources these days, so it could be impossible to get the optimum amount of people for the project. If that happens to you, you’ll just have to do the best you can and accept that the project will take longer if you can’t get the resources you need.
4. No Skilled Team Members Available
Another resourcing problem is not having the right people available. You could have plenty of people to choose from for your project team, but if they don’t have the right skills then they are of no use to you. It’s important to get a mix of both enough pairs of hands and the right skill set, otherwise you’ll end up with a large team that can’t function because it doesn’t have the correct skills to move the project forward.
In other words, you don’t just need people, you need the right people! Log this on your risk register as there is likely to be a time in the project where you are missing key skills. You can mitigate this by identifying the required skills early and then sourcing them as soon as you know they are needed.
5. Team Needs Time To Learn
Your project team may well need time to learn new skills – skills that no one has in house and that you couldn’t recruit for, or that it wouldn’t be cost-effective to recruit for. An example of this would be the use of project management software. Many project management software tools are very easy to use and need little or no training. But some can be unwieldy, and if that’s the sort of product you use, then you’ll need to allow some time in your project schedule for them to learn how to use it.
This is the same for other software, hardware, programming languages or techniques or business and project management processes. In fact, anything that someone on the team hasn’t had to do before is a learning opportunity, and you should plan in extra time in the schedule so that they have a chance to get up to scratch.
Resourcing your project can often be difficult, and my colleague had to settle for second best with a couple of the people on her team – she couldn’t get the experts she wanted as they were busy on higher profile projects. However, resource risks can be overcome and managed effectively if you are aware of them and the risks that they might present to your schedule. She ended up scheduling in extra time and booking a training course for one of the team members who isn’t so experienced. As a result, the company has gained a valuable additional trained resource and she has a project schedule that is achievable with the staff she has on the team.
Credit: projectmanager.com