This series of articles deal with management of resources in software project management including planning activities, allocation activities and de-allocation and release activities. Planning activities include resource estimation, request for resources, allocate resources, level & resources.
How do we ensure that the allocated activities are performed?
- First, provide good supervision that is more facilitating than overbearing.
- Give clear instructions, achievable targets, and provide expert assistance, as necessary.
- Provide right tools and techniques that assist the team members in completing their allocated work quickly and without defects.
- Provide quality assurance for the completed work on time.
- Ensure that the resources are trained for the work allocated to them.
- Overall, provide an achievement-oriented environment that encourages resources to excel in whatever they do.
Once allocation is made, it is expected that human resources diligently perform the activities and complete them and report back. But the reality is different. Performance of allocated activities gets stuck due to many reasons, such as,
- Some unforeseen complication crops up and the activity gets stuck or delayed
- The person commits an innocent error which is not unearthed until late and necessitates re-work
- The person ignores some of the necessary functionality by oversight which gets unearthed during QA
- The person is not expert in some advanced constructs of the programming language and is struggling to achieve the specified functionality
The objective is not just to see that activities are completed but also to ensure that they are completed within the allocated time, functionality is completely achieved and the output is defect-free. Therefore, it is necessary to follow up the work being performed by the human resources periodically and provide necessary guidance to ensure that work is performed diligently. How frequently to follow-up the work being performed? These guidelines would help –
- For very short term allocation (say less than half a day) – follow-up as soon as it is completed
- For allocation that consumes one day, follow-up twice –
- Once in the middle of the day
- Once as soon as work is completed
- For allocations that consume more than one day, follow-up daily and as soon as the work is completed
This follow-up is often referred to as Progress Chasing. This not only ensures that work is completed but also bridges communication gaps, if any, besides giving the resources a feeling that their work is important and motivates them.