Page 216 - Global Project Management Handbook

MANAGING HUMAN ENERGY IN THE PROJECT-ORIENTED COMPANY 10-5

According to the literature (Cooper et al., 1999, 2000), an important part of project
portfolio management is to select among project proposals in such a way that the resource
requirements match the resource capacity. Therefore, it may seem surprising that employees
in the majority of the companies involved in the research project feel that the organiza-
tion runs too many projects simultaneously. The empirical data revealed a lot of explana-
tions for this.
The most striking finding is that many top managers believe that a healthy company is
an organization that runs many projects and has many projects in the pipeline. The mere
number of projects is seen as a way for the company/top management to signal healthiness.
Therefore, they claim, the motivation to cut down the number of projects is not very high.
Another issue influencing the number of projects is that it is not easy for top managers
to select between the various projects and project proposals because it is difficult to deter-
mine the benefits of each project. Top managers are afraid of missing a good option if
they don’t run for the various opportunities. Therefore, they are very reluctant to say no.
A third issue is that nobody in the companies seems to have an overview of the (full)
resource requirements and capacity. Projects are initiated both locally in the departments
and centrally in the organization, and nobody feels responsible for collecting information
about all initiatives.
Further, it is difficult to estimate resource requirements because many of the project
tasks are new, and therefore, the estimates cannot be based on earlier experience. In com-
bination with this, the employees claim that it is difficult to estimate resource capacity.
As mentioned earlier, it may be possible to calculate the calendar time available but not
the energy/working capacity: “On a good day I can accomplish this task in two hours; on
a bad day it takes me eight hours.”
Not only are there difficulties in terms of determining the list of projects and the
resource requirements and capacity, but some top managers also point out that they
do not want an overview to exist. They are afraid that the organization will loose
flexibility and dynamics if they emphasize planning very much. Further, they are
afraid that employees will feel overwhelmed if they become more conscious of the
amount of work they are supposed to do. They prefer a “muddling through” way of
working. These thoughts are illustrated by the following statements offered by three
top managers:

I truly believe that a better resource management would have the effect that we didn’t

start up so many projects. On the other hand, we would not be that dynamic.
I am a little against that you organize [the projects] in lists and plans— “This project
goes from here to there and require these and these resources.” Quite soon [all] the
resources have been spent. Our customers don’t care about this. They don’t give a damn
whether we have resources or not. They just want to get the products to the right price and
the right quality.
To allocate resources [for a list of projects] would give a picture to which people
would say, “Pooh!” . . . So if you [make the resource requirements visible by calculating
estimates on project outlines], people almost say, “Pooh, we cannot do it, because we
don’t have all these resources.” By not [making the resource requirements visible] we have
motivated a lot of people to speed up because they were forced to get the work done in the
time [available].

These statements relate to the amount of pressure on employees. Many top managers
feel that performance will be higher if their employees are challenged very hard at all
times. Running several projects simultaneously is a way of creating a sense of urgency.
Two statements illustrate this: