Productivity - ITM Platform | Projects Programs Portfolio

The management and planning of resources is an essential process in business, since it allows the monitoring of projects and their results, as well as anticipating the emergence of risks.

The best way to handle the management of resources is to use some kind of assistant that helps to know, plan and manage the economic and human resources that are available, with the goal of achieving maximum efficiency. For this reason, many companies consider resource management as a priority.

Here are some practices that resource management can bring to your company.

Understand the difference between occupied time and utilized time

If you realize that the employees are working all the time but are not reaching the goals set, there is something that is not working well: there is a mismatch between the time spent and the use of time efficiently. They may not be using the right procedures; they do not have the necessary technology or they need to update their training.

Are you ready to own your time? Start tracking your estimates live with ITM Platform for free.

Of course, it is also possible that project managers are not taking into account precautionary measures when estimating. Here are the 3 keys to estimating realistic times for your projects:

Two out of ten working hours are not productive

In most countries, you have 8 working hours. However, keep in mind that if you have resources in France, for example, then there are 7 working hours.

However many hours there are in a working day, not all of those hours are productive. Employees will have to participate in meetings, interact with clients or engage in unplanned tasks.

Therefore, it is advisable to calculate that around 80% of actual hours worked will be productive. This is not a guarantee, on the contrary: although the efficiency of your equipment will exceed this threshold, a lot can happen that may reduce the amount of hours dedicated to a project.

Find out how many resources are assigned to each project

Although it would be most efficient to have your analysts dedicated exclusively to a project from start to finish, there are plenty of reasons why this is neither usual nor practical: from small projects where only specific participation of certain experts is required or highly specialized tasks concentrated in certain phases of the project, to very complex projects that displace some resources from their usual projects.

It is logical that effectiveness decreases as the number of projects to which a resource is allocated increases.

via GIPHY

For example, if you only assign one hour a day for a critical task, it is very possible that your project will be delayed: the employee assigned to the task is likely to perceive that there are more important things to do, unless you properly communicate that this task is your top priority.

Calculate how much time will be spent on learning

Estimates are usually based on the time spent on a similar project. But, as it is said, the devil’s in the detail.

It is possible that some of the differences in the new project will hide challenges that team members will have to learn before overcoming, either in a planned or on-the-job process. Detecting these critical points will allow us to better identify if there are more suitable team members for the project than others or if it is worth outsourcing some parts of the process.

Support estimations with applications

Adequate project management begins by identifying these problems before undertaking new projects. Whether it be short-term or business operations, which can become problems to estimate and correctly allocate the times.

That is why it is so important to use applications that monitor the exact state of all projects of the company in real time.

For example, with ITM Platform Teambot, you can make it easier for your team members to:

Consult active projects, reducing the transit from one project to another
Report time spent on a task in real time, improving your future estimates
Send feedback from a contrasting chat environment, such as Slack

Once the results of the analysis are known, the reasons for deviations can be detected and decisions can be taken to make production processes more efficient.

If you want to discover how to better control the time management of your team with ITM Platform, we invite you to request a personalized demo, where you can speak to one of our experts.

Juan Delgado

Blogger

ITM Platform

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vector human resource management concept in flat style This is one of the ways to assign a certain task to a worker. Unfortunately, it is among the most frequent, but the least effective.

Imagine that something similar happened in a hospital. A patient who has suffered an accident and has fractured a leg comes to the emergency room. Who should care for this patient? Any doctor, who is free at the time? Or would it be better for the patient to be taken care of by a specialist in trauma and fractures?

In this example, the answer is clear. However, it is not straight forward when allocating resources and workers to projects in a company.

Allocation of resources: key to efficiency

Appropriately allocating tasks will ensure that each worker is engaged in projects for which he or she is more skilled or more experienced. By ensuring appropriate allocation, it is possible to improve the efficiency of the company, obtaining better results in less time. The result is greater profits for the company and for workers at all levels.

Economic benefits. The quality of the results will be greater, since the project has been executed by a specialist. In the example above, there will probably be better patient survival rates and better functional outcomes (less pain, faster recuperation, etc.) if the physician is a specialist.

Increased confidence. The achievement of good results is in itself an outstanding value for obtaining new clients. Returning to the example, if the patient is satisfied, he is likely to recommend the clinic to other patients who present the same problems, which, if they have the possibility, will choose the option they consider the best. Likewise, if a company satisfies its customers, they will become a source of publicity within their professional sector.

Temporary benefits. It is possible that a specialist and a layman in this instance will achieve the same result in the end, but it will probably take a lot longer for the layman. This additional time incurs an expense in the form of opportunity cost: the additional time dedicated to the task by the lay worker could have been used to perform another task, therefore losing both time and money. In addition, the fact that a worker who has no experience is engaged in performing a certain task, increases the risk that they will not be able to complete the work on time. This is another reason why a suitably qualified worker should be assigned to each appropriate task.

Benefits for workers. Focusing on tasks for which you have prior knowledge and preparation, allows you to obtain satisfactory results for yourself, which allows personal self-realization and decreases stress levels.

Assignment of tasks: aspects to consider

What aspects should be considered when assigning a task to a particular worker?

Skills. This is the most important thing. Does the person we are going to assign to perform this task have the necessary skills to be able to execute the project completely and successfully? If the answer is yes, there is no doubt, this is the right person for this task

Experience. Has the person to whom we will be assigning the project carried out similar tasks previously? If the answer is yes, you will have valuable experience that you can use in the realization of this new project. In addition, it will present less uncertainty and more confidence, since they have managed in the field previously, therefore should require less support from management and colleagues. In this instance, experience could be more important than skills. If a worker is qualified to perform a task but has no experience, he or she may still need to receive some support during their first steps, to become fully comfortable.

Interest. Difficult to measure but very necessary for the success of a task. A worker may have qualifications in a particular area and also have experience, but that does not mean that he is motivated. Motivation is fundamental to be able to perform a task properly and be able to respond to new problems that arise during the execution of a project. Therefore, we must talk to the workers before assigning them a project and, not only assess their training and experience, but also take into account their motivation.

Cost. Using overqualified workers to perform relatively simple tasks is to misuse resources and imply an unnecessary expense. Going back to the example at the beginning of the article, it would be like occupying the specialist surgeon in organizing the appointments or the programming of the operating room. They are administrative tasks that can be performed by the surgeon, but it is preferable that the management team takes care of this to allow the surgeon to utilize their skill set and experience in the most effective way. In the case of personnel with less specialized qualifications, their salary will be lower and therefore imply a lower cost.

Geographic location. There are more and more tasks that can be carried out remotely, allowing the most qualified or experienced personnel to be hired for a specific role, regardless of their geographical location and without having to pay transportation costs. However, there are tasks that still require the physical presence of workers. Therefore, the economic, temporary and personal cost of moving a worker to a specific place to carry out a project, or selecting another worker who is already in the location but may be less qualified must be weighed up.

Availability. Obviously, to assign a task to a particular worker, they must be available. However, the fact that they are available does not necessarily imply that the task has to be assigned to the first worker that is present. Checking the availability of workers should ensure that new tasks are assigned fairly, however also making sure that the workforce aren’t being either underutilized or overworked.

In order to keep track of the degree of utilization of the talent of a company or a project, it is essential to have efficient mechanisms for collecting information and reporting. The resource management module of ITM Platform allows you to check the use in a portfolio view, so that you can detect overlaps in the use of resources by different project managers.

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Juan Delgado

Blogger

ITM Platform

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Even 16 years into the 21st century, there is a very common story about companies that are not leveraging the wealth of information on employee performance to their advantage. Typically, these organizations prefer their employees to stay on their desks for longer hours as a measure of productivity, motivation and commitment. In these cases, poor project management is cured by merely expanding the scope with more and more time effort.

Another sign of disrespect to performance information is a killing culture of long meetings, or even of just too frequent meetings for any topic that requires any kind of interaction –it doesn’t really matter whether you have 5 one hour meetings or one deadly, heart-melting 4 hour meeting: your work will be frozen just the same. Sometimes, organizations that try to be agile fall into this trap.

If your company is suffering from this kind of counterproductive culture that kills productivity, there are basically two ways you can change it.

Become a Dane (yes, it’s unlikely)

Your name is Richard Heart? Change it to Rikkard Hjertsen. Move your company’s HQ to Denmark, where people finish their workday regularly before 5 and still manage to get their stuff done. They say the trick is simply trust in the work completed.

Or turn Dane in your own territory. Netflix did a similar thing in 2012 when they abolished the notion of holidays for an unlimited time off policy of “freedom and responsibility”. But there’s a wicked angle to it: after just x months into this major shift, the HR manager who coined the new holiday culture was fired, and many employees are actually taking less time off to prove their commitment. Back to square one. In other words: when unnuanced, major policy shifts are likely to have unintended consequences. And they can be really hard to heal.

Other companies have been more realistic about their Danification: Spanish utility company Iberdrola simply shuts down their offices after 3 pm and forces their employees to stay focused for seven-hour shifts starting at 8 am. For a Spanish company, it’s a big deal, and so far it’s worked well.

Be smart about your people processes

The opposite way is to actually be smart about what I call your people processes.

People processes are all the organizational flows in virtue of which you assign responsibilities, allocate tasks, measure completion and (what is often overlooked) get back to people to make sure they understand what their value contribution is.

You will have to be attentive to all the nuances in your company, and treat people differently corresponding to their personalities, working styles, objectives and effectiveness.

There is no simple treat for smart people processes, but here are some recommendations that can help you find the right path.

People processes start SMART

SMART objectives can align project management and people management processes. Treat your employees with goals that are Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-bound!

Recruit objective-oriented talent

Try hard to recruit people who prefer to work based on objectives. Of course, this is easier said than done; but some things that you should be looking at in the recruitment process are resumes that display clear achievement narratives; interviewees who are energized by challenges; and employees who don’t mind taking some work home during high peak but are intelligent enough to prioritize properly.

FIFO, not FILO

Build business dependencies to reward employees who come in first and get the job done. With no surveillance into the processes, it’s easy to transform First In, First Out personalities into First In, Last Out burnout promises.

Identify critical data

This is the essential resource management data for project management:

Allocation gaps: Of the total amount of man-hours estimated for a project, how many of them have been assigned to your resources?
Utilization: How many man-hours are currently assigned to each of your resources? Are any of them currently having a problem of underutilization or overutilization?

An important problem of resource management data is its exhaustiveness and reliability. In other words, you need to be sure that when a resource appears as underutilized, he or she is not actually working on tasks that haven’t been registered.

That’s why you should make sure that the project management software you use meets three conditions:

It allows you to view and compare allocation gaps and utilization stats so you can pivot your assignments and identify bottlenecks
It is properly enforced and used by all project managers and team members
It allows for a program and portfolio vision, so you scale utilization at the organization level

It’s really easy to adopt ITM Platform to meet all three conditions:

Easy adoption. Our SaaS deployment, easy rollout and licensing policies allow to have project managers, portfolio owners and team members on the same platform. Additionally, with the ITM Platform Teambot team members can report their efforts directly from their Slack chatbox.
ITM Platform is an industry leader in Project and Portfolio Management.
Our resource management functionality combines allocation gaps and utilization statistics in a unified vision at the portfolio level.

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Iterate on your data

Of course, you will have to look back at your project management data and ask a few questions, which can be addressed in project post-mortems or at a more strategic level.

You basically want to know why your performance forecasts aren’t met.

For example, you may have an average 35% excess between the estimated hours and the final effort devoted to a project. But unless you look into it with more detail, you won’t be able to know whether the problem lies in:

Low productivity of task and project members
Unforeseen events
Unrealistic expectations
Or a combination of all

You can build several HR analytics into this evaluation process, and the layer can be as complex as you want it to be. However, it’s good to keep in mind that your human resources are people and you will need to treat them with flexibility: beware of decisions based solely on data!

For example, you could start by looking at the estimation accuracy per worker, per type of project or per project manager, and start creating baseline metrics. This could then help you better compile requirements and tune time estimations to how your experts actually work.

Go beyond your usual toolkit: Social Network Analysis and others

Utilization and allocation gap metrics usually allow to identify bottlenecks, but they may not be enough. You may be interested in supplementing them with analysis of how your organization actually communicates. For example, a social network analysis based on your reporting procedures will allow to view who are the formal gatekeepers in your organization; while an empirical study of real information flows will allow you to see who is actually blocking or facilitating the processes.

Have you ever used other type of analysis and metrics? What’s your smart approach to HR analytics, and how does it contribute to improving your project management processes?

Jaime González-Capitel

Senior Content Strategist

ITM Platform

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Coordination, quantification metrics and business intelligence are three of the main keys for guiding the work of a project management office. Although not all organizations have come this far ...

The PMO and the company: X-ray of the situation

In 2011, Forrester and the Project Management Institute conducted a survey that canvassed 693 PMO leaders.

These experts were asked which is the main task of a PMO. More than 70% of the respondents agreed that the three main functions of a PMO are project management, general management and development of methodologies.

On the other hand, they were asked how they feel the results of a project should be quantified to be considered satisfactory. In this case, some of the results may seem a little surprising. Let us see their answers:

51% of respondents said to measure the degree of achievement of the objectives planned at project outset.
49% said they quantify based on customer satisfaction.
47% measured deadlines met and fulfillment of budget plans.
21% considered that a project has been properly carried out if the use of resources is optimal.
24% of the respondents confessed not to quantify in any way the result of their project management.

That is to say: just five years ago, a quarter of the sample, representing PMO directors in the United States, were not using any quantitative metrics to evaluate the results of their project management office.

Reasons to incorporate a PMO into your company

Optimize resources

Where there is no centralized coordination over project managers, it is difficult to adequately leverage resources in terms of staffing, logistics and distribution, procurement and vendor relationships, and so on. On the contrary adding PMO supervision can ensure that all parties have the necessary information on the mobilized resources.

Minimize investment

In short, PMOs seek to avoid mismatches and inefficiencies, reducing the amount of time and financial resources that need to be deployed to achieve the same result.

Continuous assessment

Without a culture of continuous evaluation, it is difficult to defend the value of a PMO. That’s why the lack of outcome-related metrics identified by the Forrester and PMI report is surprising. To be able to obtain better results in the future, the first step is to know and quantify your baseline position. Subsequently, a thorough and quantitative analysis of the processes must be performed from a critical point of view, which allows the detection of weak points and proposes decisions to act upon them. In this sense, for many organizations where the culture of agile management has been instilled, continuous evaluation by the PMO is closely related to the innovation processes.

Business Intelligence

The quantification of data is not enough. Relevant data should be selected and presented in a simple way that allows proper interpretation, comparison between different projects and guided decision making. This section is especially important in multinational companies, in which it is essential to standardize communication channels to facilitate understanding between them.

Responsibilities of the PMO

A whole series of activities stemming from the evaluation culture can be developed to ensure that the organization's strategies are supported by realistic data on business development.

Quantification of change. Once measures are taken to improve project management and to achieve better results, these should be quantified and also entered into structured reports.
Making predictions. The quantification of the current state of the company and its progression in time will allow to make predictions.
Establishment of frameworks that allow standardization in the execution of projects and their direction. Currently known as agile methodologies in project management.
Ensure proper compliance with regulations. The establishment of working protocols and methodologies ensures compliance with current regulations. To give a practical and simple example, establishing a working protocol for food transport will guarantee the quality of the product that reaches the market or the restaurant.
Financial Transparency. Control of the processes and the cost of each one of them will allow greater financial transparency with tax regulators, managers and clients, avoiding irregularities in any process or level of company administration and improving the confidence of all interested parties.

Juan Delgado

Blogger - ITM Platform

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Sacrificing a project or task when you realize that it is not developing properly can lead to giving more explanations than you would like, or managing the frustrations of the team. However, taking the necessary steps will allow you to rescue the project, save the final result, or even the company!

If both financial and human resources are assigned to a particular task it is because the expected results are worth it. Devoting efforts and resources to a fruitless task involves a twofold cost: firstly the wastage of these resources in a task that will not bring the desired result. On the other, it means less resources for other tasks or projects that could be better developed if they had the required resources.

Therefore, deciding to rescue a lost project or to abandon it within good time are difficult but essential decisions for a well-run company.

How to recover a seemingly lost project? In this article we answer this question.

41240696 - a two african-american businessmen. man on top is happy while sitting and man in bottom is sad while standing. rivalry concept. a contemporary style with pastel palette soft blue tinted background with desaturated clouds. vector flat design illustration.

Recognizing errors

The first step, though it may be obvious, is the most important. When a project goes wrong, the first thing is to acknowledge it.

In many cases, a way to know if the project can present problems during its implementation is to have completed the proper planning of risks and how to identify them. Identifying these risks, will allow you to take effective measures to rescue the project.

Additionally, before the implementation of the project there must be a series of planned milestones, which allow you to know if the end result will satisfy the established customer expectations. Of course, a task will require monitoring to ensure that goals are being achieved and deviations are forecasted in time. Do not forget to communicate with your client what your estimates are, either through regular reporting procedures or when there is a significant change.

The recognition of an error can serve as a starting point for analysis, both at the company or individually, in search of the aspects that can be improved.

Also, there is no single answer to the temporal dimension: if the risk is imminent, it may be important to launch the analysis during project implementation even if this may slow down the work. In other cases, the best phase for analysis is a post-mortem analysis.

If you want to know more, we recommend reading this article: How do I know if my project is on track?

If there are no other solutions, abandon the project

Once you have identified that the project is likely to fail, the next step is to consider whether it makes sense to continue with it. As mentioned above, an active project inevitably consumes resources. It would be appropriate to consider whether it makes sense to continue to devote these resources to a project that you know will not get the desired results or if it is better to cancel the project and devote those means to other more viable projects.

The opportunity cost of keeping a failing project is the loss of resources which other projects could use in order to achieve the expected results.

A defeat on time can be a final victory. Therefore, identifying the risks and probabilities of failure of a project are essential to ensure the ultimate success of a global project or a company.

Seeking external support

Sometimes it is difficult for oneself to find ones’ own mistakes. Whether it be pride or self-indulgence, we tend to think that what we have done is right, and overlook certain things.

An example is computer programmers. In most companies, when developing software programs, they are not tested on the same computer that they have been created. This is because they have observed that the review is more comprehensive and objective when performed by an external evaluator.

Self-evaluation tends to be more benevolent and more easily satisfied.

In addition, an outside observer, especially an experienced one, can make for a valuable and objective opinion.

It is possible that, entertained with superficial problems, we may be ignoring other deeper and more fundamental problems within the project. These are the essential problems that should focus all of our attention.

Pursue small victories

Although completing an entire project can seem overwhelming and complex, often it is not necessary to do extraordinary things to get excellent results. A small victory every day can culminate in a final success.

What are those little victories? One of the secrets for daily excellence is quite simple: it is to meet each day with the corresponding tasks in the most appropriate manner, with the greatest effort and dedication. This daily combination of efficiency and effectiveness is the key to long term success.

Good engineers mastered this art: the face of such overwhelming projects as a bridge, an aircraft carrier or a new software, the secret is to analyze the ultimate goal, break it down into the smallest components as possible and organize work around those parts.

Instead of an incomprehensible goal lasting a few months, both the project leader and team members can focus on the day-to-day tasks at hand. The challenge of motivating the team can be attributed to the concentration of daily work, reducing the concentration of daily work therefore eliminates the anxiety about the complexity of the project and provides productivity-focused components.

Using more resources is not (always) the best answer

Try to think of the attention and motivation as the psychological capital of the company. This has helped me to realize one important rule: to manage resources, the most important thing is not how much I have and can mobilize, but how to distribute and control them.

I do not want my employees to be distracted in trying to understand the whole project cycle and trying to juggle what they are developing as well as what the responsibilities of another unit are. I want them to focus on their own tasks, maximize their energy and motivation and achieve maximum productivity.

When transferred to financial, material or human resources, the standard is still true: the most important thing is not how many resources are used, but how they are distributed. Companies that achieve greater success are not those with more means and less input. Google started in a garage.

Resources are not the difference between a successful company and one that fails. The key is in how those resources, and projects that leverage them, are managed. If you want to stay competitive, ITM platform offers a simple management solution that allows you to make appropriate use of resources and bring your projects and your company success.

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

Extra Extra Extra!

Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

Juan Delgado Moraleda

Blogger ITM Platform

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Although an essential part of project management is to plan all possible scenarios and be prepared for any eventuality, it is always possible that a problem or circumstance we did not originally plan for can appear. Therefore, although we cannot anticipate all circumstances, we can anticipate how to react to an unforeseen situation. Here are some tips:

Show leadership

It is very easy to say but very difficult to implement. When things go wrong it is most common that the team lose their nerve and do not know what to do or freeze and do nothing.

When this happens, a leader who reassures the team is necessary, reflects and works together to find the best solution to the problem.

It is not about blame but understanding the problem and finding the solution.

Avoid the temptation to increase resources

A simple way to solve problems in project management is simply to increase resources for them. However, this is the least desirable solution.

Firstly, you must exhaust all avenues based on the optimal management of available resources. That is precisely project management: getting the best results desired by the project managers and especially by customers whilst making the best use of resources therefore achieving optimum utilization.

On the other hand, increasing resources does not necessarily improve the result. It is necessary to guide them properly. That is if, you finally decide to increase the resources used; project management will be critical in deciding how to use them.

Another aspect to consider is that new resources take time to produce the expected results. This time lag should also be considered since it is possible that despite increased resources, the results are not achieved within the desired timeframe.

However, a reorganization of resources assigned can probably be faster but not easier. Again, the project manager must be able to articulate the resources available to solve the problems that arise.

Show problems as they are

Do not be tempted to minimize problems. If a problem has a certain magnitude, show it as it is.

The only way to find an effective solution to a problem is to know it properly. The members of your team have a right to know what they are facing to adapt their effort and attitude to the needs of the company and the project.

In addition, trust is something that costs a lot to get but very little to lose. If later it is shown that you have not been completely honest with the circumstances, this can take its toll the teams’ confidence they have in you as a leader. Therefore, sincerity should always come first.

Check everything you do

Any project completed from best to worst has hits and misses. And you can learn from both.

It is easy and tempting to indulge in the completed project in the event it went well or forget where you’ve gone wrong. Neither of these attitude brings long- term benefit.

The most useful attitude is, regardless of how well a project has turned out, analyze the successes and mistakes made in it to learn from the experience and to apply it in future projects.

Successes should be recognized and rewarded in some way. However, although it should indicate the mistakes to avoid their repetition, they should not be accompanied by punishment. This only confuses the working environment for future projects.

This principle of continuous improvement (Kaizen) makes it possible to avoid backsliding on errors and instead repeat the successes. Perfection is not a goal to reach but a goal to pursue.

It involves the entire company

Making changes is necessary to include all those involved in the project. From the director of the company to the substitutes and trainees, all of them are important in the project and should feel that their work is valued.

Similarly, changes and analysis of successes and failures should be made at all levels in order to achieve global changes with scope.

At ITM platform we know the business world perfectly, because leaders in different sectors use our project management software.

Try it out and discover what it can do for you

https://www.itmplatform.com/en/projects-programs-portfolio-subscription/

Top 5 most read blogs on ITM Platform:

The Monte Carlo Method in Project Management

Extra Extra Extra!

Three disastrous project management failures

The project in the face of adversity: what should a project manager do?

What is the Virtual Sock Management or Periodical Online Management?

Juan Delgado

Blogger ITM Platform