7 votes

How to utilize resources effectively in cross-functional scrum teams?

They will do other work that needs doing. Keep in mind that "being in the sprint" means that the story is important. Not being in the sprint means the story is not that important. Looking for ...
  • 1,289
6 votes

How to allocate resources across projects with equal priority

You are solving wrong problem Your PM is completely out of control and #1 task is to get Projects back to PMs hands. They're now run by the Client and Developers, which is not really their job. . ...
6 votes

Resource conflict handling

Both projects should have business cases tied to them. It should be relatively straight-forward for an appropriate authority to use these together with knowledge of your organization's priorities and ...
  • 8,899
5 votes

When does throwing in people to meet a Project's Scope or Time constraints ever work?

In certain cases it is possible to get more work done if you introduce more people. The most usual scenario is when teams take time to do detailed scoping and when the project itself allows low ...
4 votes

What to do if a member of a team finishes all his sprint tasks ahead of schedule?

You have a few options at your disposal. Use the available time to work on technical debts or fix bugs. Ask the team member to share load another team member to help her/him in completing the sprint ...
  • 3,227
4 votes
Accepted

In resource allocation, how do you call the group of people that will be hired in the future?

The term usually used is "Candidate Pool" / "Succession pool". This usually includes candidates that you are planning to at least keep in mind in case you'll need to expand your workforce.
4 votes

Setting Up Infrastructure for Managing a Distributed team

Getting started with a distributed software development team Welcome to PMSE! You said your team will be doing web and mobile development. Even though your question is very broad, I am taking a shot ...
4 votes
Accepted

Resource conflict handling

This is a common issue where the PM needs a scarce resource, and there is insufficient capacity to allow all demands on that resource to be met. Ultimately, someone in the organisation has to make a ...
  • 6,783
4 votes

How to respond to too much work in too little time from the customer?

Don't sign the contract. Say no. Look around at other industries. No other industry, EXCEPT IT, will you see this phenomena to this degree. Try it. Hire a builder and tell them they need to complete ...
4 votes
Accepted

How to accurately communicate task priorities?

Good question. I'm unclear on some of the details that inspire your question, so I'm going to provide three different answers Risk Matrices are dangerous to your health. You say, I fall back to very ...
  • 8,738
3 votes

How to allocate resources across projects with equal priority

As Vadim suggests, it is crystal clear your PM capabilities are immature and under performing. It could be the abilities of the PM himself or a combination of the PM and organization systems and ...
3 votes

Resource conflict handling

When this happens, this is either a non-issue or the tip of a broader issue. If both projects want Bob, but they don't need Bob and could use Jason instead but he's not quite as good, it's a non-...
  • 16.8k
3 votes

How can my PERT diagram take account of my resources?

This video shows how to organize the problem with a table, and proposes a simple greedy slack based heuristic solution: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7AJ73qxZtsI This page http://www....
3 votes
Accepted

How do you manage resources in an agile approach with PMI

Generally speaking, there is always something for people to do. They can help a colleague with their tasks, learn a new trick, write some documentation, clean up some code, talk with some other team, ...
  • 1,289
3 votes
Accepted

When does throwing in people to meet a Project's Scope or Time constraints ever work?

Different tasks have different degrees of resources elasticity. And a task in itself can have different degrees of elasticity depending on other present variables like the environment. Imagine ten ...
3 votes
Accepted

Problem dealing with a resistant resource

As with all marginally performing employees, you sit them down, you outline expectations and achievable objectives, you detail a timeline, and then you measure for improved performance. This is ...
2 votes
Accepted

How to handle being ignored by team member/resource

When I encounter this type of resistance I first email them (cc their supervisor) and ask to set up a face to face meeting. If this is not feasible, I change the email to address both employee and ...
  • 118
2 votes

Who is responsible for people resourcing in a project?

The project manager is responsible for delivering the project and therefore making sure that the necessary amount of man power (with proper knowledge) is working - will work - on the project. Ideally, ...
  • 11.9k
2 votes
Accepted

Who is responsible for people resourcing in a project?

Since the PM knows what it takes to deliver the project, they have the best sense of what resources they need. So, in a typical scenario, the project managers ask for resourcing based on their own ...
2 votes

How to optimize for Flow Efficiency over Resource Utilization?

Based on the information you provided: How does one actually accomplish this? In context of projects I suggest to start with optimizing the schedule for lead time (as opposed to minimum cost). ...
2 votes

MS Project doesn't calculate task finish date correclty

I think I figured it out. In the respective resource calendar -> work weeks -> details the time for the allocated resource was set to: 08:00 AM - 10:00 AM 11:AM - 1:00 PM I changed that to: 08:...
  • 89
2 votes

MS Project 2013: Can I avoid MSP auto-changing my assignment units to less than 100%?

The screen shot does not show the field names, but it appears that you have a task Duration of 1 day (e.g. 8 hours), but Work set to 4 hrs (e.g. half a day). In order for resources to only work 4 ...
2 votes

How to respond to too much work in too little time from the customer?

Looks like a growth opportunity to me! Remember that: The customer cannot know how much effort each piece of work takes. The customer cannot know how much work you have already committed and how ...
2 votes
Accepted

How to respond to too much work in too little time from the customer?

To effectively justify your estimations it is always better to have the project plan. What you're asking actually can have different answers depending on the current phase of the project. But the ...
  • 315
2 votes

What is the evidence supporting the PMBOK practices?

If you are trying to assess the scientific validity of the PMBoK, you will not get too far. The PMBoK is a body of knowledge and not even the complete body of knowledge. It is not prescriptive but ...
2 votes

What is the evidence supporting the PMBOK practices?

In fact, the Project Management Institute has two monograph about the evidence associated to Project Management practices: Quantifying the Value of Project Management. The monographs shows that ...
2 votes

When does throwing in people to meet a Project's Scope or Time constraints ever work?

One way to think about it is to consider if the task would be marked "Effort Driven" if you were creating an MS Project Plan for it. Effort driven tasks are actually expedited by adding people (at ...
2 votes

When does throwing in people to meet a Project's Scope or Time constraints ever work?

A lot of the other answer, cover the case where there is a lot of independence. But what if there is no space on the team to add anyone, then is it ever possible. Hire a specialist in an area that ...
2 votes

Resources Management - I can't manage some people

Project Management Fundamentals Managing a project involves considering its constraints, namely scope, resources, schedule, budget and risk. So, part of managing the project requires managing people ...
2 votes

Resources Management - I can't manage some people

Maybe I am wrong, but from your message I can see two main problems: No common way of working (their way and what you have in mind) You have resources but you don't have a team I was confronted to ...
  • 106

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