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.