Carry Out Proactive
Resource Allocation
From the very start of this book, it has been emphasized
that a major problem in international projects is that people in a location can
be drawn away from the project to do other work. Often, if they do not tell you,
then you will not know this has happened until you inquire about the status of
the work. Moreover, this approach is reactive.
The goal here is to define a proactive approach that heads off or
at least minimizes the extent to which people are pulled from the project. Here
is a technique that works:
-
Identify the critical resources to the project. These may be
individual who are working on tasks with risk or on tasks where there is severe
time pressure.
-
Arrange a weekly meeting with the appropriate line
manager(s) to review the use of their resources in the project and the projected
use of the resources in the upcoming week. Since there are often multiple
locations, you will have to resort to telephone or videoconferencing. A good day
to do this is Thursday—before the end of the week, but also far enough in the
work week.
-
At the meeting, you will first review how the current week
went. Identify any times when the person was pulled from the project. Discuss
why and how this happened. This will indicate to them that you are aware of what
is going on. They will be more reluctant to do this in the future. Now turn to
the upcoming week. Ask what is going on that would interfere with their work in
the project. This may force some of the hidden agendas out in the open. Discuss
what they will be working on in the project. Agree on what is to be done. In
general, you should have people work on your project on Tuesday and Wednesday.
Why these particular days? Well, Monday is just after the weekend and there may
have been problems over the weekend that have to be addressed. Thursday and
Friday are days when people are getting ready for the weekend.
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