Lack of resources

Look For:

• Reallocation of resources as a management handle

• Hiring strategies to make up for delays

• Resource requests from the project

Why

“If you add resources to a late and complex project, you get a project that is more late and more complex!” Said Friderich Brooks in 1991 in his great book “The Mystical Man-month.” Most experienced project managers have had the feeling but lacked the real proof. It came with the use of Systems Dynamics models of complex projects, and MIT has proved this over the last 20 years.  In simple projects, adding resources may help, but not in complex ones. It turns out that the accumulated effort required from all the team members to make up for the performance drop that comes with a new team member is surprisingly high and simply makes it a bad strategy.

Leading Principes:

First, don’t start a project with too few resources. Wait; a full team will easily catch up. A diminished team will become delayed, and when it happens, accept the delays and let them continue, don’t add ressources.

This principle may seem very counterintuitive – but only in the world of simple projects.

Ask for:

Realistic estimates from stable project teams.