A process for planning your projects
Service providers who carry out projects for their customers generally want two things: on the one hand, a fast and satisfactory result for their customers, and profitability on the other hand. An optimal allocation of employees to the projects is crucial. Yet, we often see that project and resource planning is limited to a one-off activity at the start of the project. Shouldn't more attention be paid to this?
4 stages of resource planning
Our clients, who implement projects where multiple people are involved, often struggled with the question of how to organise in regards to resource planning. In this blog post we will look at the different development stages companies go through and the organisation of resource planning which would be appropriate. We will spell out what the risks would be if you do not prepare for this within a reasonable period of time.
Does your project planning suffer from Parkinson’s?
I mean Parkinson's law, not the terrible brain disease. Parkinson's law states that work is spread over the time that is available to complete the work. This is one of the 4 time wasters in project planning which we discussed in one of our previous blog postings. In this blog we will see how you can determine if your project planning has this condition and how to manage it.
Plan the big projects first
If you look at the picture, you might be thinking there are more stones and sand in the first jar than in the second jar, but nothing could be further from the truth. The second jar contains the exact same amount of sand and stones, only the content doesn't fit in the first jar. That has to do with the order of filling the jar. If you first fill the jar with the large stones, then the smaller stones and
Do you plan your projects around margin?
For many organizations, they are only able to see in hindsight what the margin was they achieved for their project, which for many, leads to disappointment. The project ended not being as profitable as they had thought. Even while remaining within the budgeted number of hours. How is that even possible? An analysis showed that they, for example, relied on freelancers instead of internal staff on which the project was budgeted. Or that more senior employees were used, disproportionately, which
Planning – do it like the homo sapiens!
Planning is as ancient as the human race. Ever since humans began to think ahead and started hunting in groups, plans have been made to achieve the best possible result. At first, planning was based purely on (non-)verbal communication.
3 benefits of a project planning tool
A business lead recently asked me if I could help forming the business case for purchasing Timewax. Although he saw the value in it, he needed outside input to "sell" it internally. Management asked for a business case with hard data, as in, how would they be better off using it? It’s a legitimate question. In this blog entry, we will focus on three key benefits to using a project planning tool and we will try to quantify them as
Making up a roster for projects: can you do that?
I have been in touch with a number of organizations lately, which had all tried to plan their projects in Workforce Management software. In other words, they tried to make up a roster of their projects in rostering software. Can this actually be done and if so, what are the limitations? In this blog we will look at this, using a practical case.
Detailed planning? 3 deciding factors
If you create many small tasks and include in your planning, you can end up "blowing up" you planning. The risk is that you will end up spending your entire day on updating your planning, especially in a dynamic environment that requires many changes. This blog will explore what alternatives there are and what factors determine whether you should plan in detail or not.
Flexibility is the norm, but in sustainable form
There are more and more signals that the future labor organization without far-reaching forms of flexibility will not last long. The discussion on flexibilization focuses mainly on the distinction between 'bad' and 'good' flexibility. This blog contains a number of topics on what will now be called 'sustainable flexibilization'.