I
have seen in multiple situations that managers are hesitant about committing
their resources to multiple projects. Even if they commit to multiple projects,
they (managers and individual resources) go overboard with percent allocation
to multiple projects. E.g. if someone is allocated 80% to project A and 20% to
project B, people religiously put aside 8 hrs in a week for project B, and they
push back on project A if it needed more than 32 hours in that week. Some
people put aside few hours every day or one day in a week for project B. These
models are ridiculously impractical, and impact all projects. The funniest
thing is that 8 hrs and 32 hrs are approximations and some people (not all) use
it conveniently based on their preferences. I have not seen anyone literally
clocking their time, and it’s not practical either.
It’s
expensive to dedicate resources for a single project. We need to come up with a
better way to deal with multiple projects situation. The goal is to ensure that
all projects are successful.
Let
me clarify something. % allocation is mainly used for planning your budgets for
accounting needs. We should look at allocation as a decision making framework
used to make a right choices. E.g. developers use prioritization guidelines to
pick up tasks from project A and project B. Leadership and management team
needs to agree on what’s really important for all projects and provide guidance
to individuals. Sometimes we need to use common sense to move around schedules
to make both projects successful.
Your
organization culture and culture within team plays an important role. The right
culture will empower individuals to make choices which are in line with
business goals. This way we will not spend too much time on analyzing %
allocations.
