The paradox of the pandemic reality is that while some people are being laid off or facing salary cuts due to an insufficient workload, others are experiencing unprecedented stress due to extra work they have to complete from home. The phenomena of project
organization’s routine is that nobody can predict which projects will continue and which will be put on hold. The IT industry is very dynamic, so changing priorities is a normal occurrence for any large-scale organization. However, these days, things have gotten even more unpredictable.
Resource levelling is the project management term that refers to the adjustment of resource assignments to use resources efficiently and to eliminate or minimize wait or overload. When you work with a resource pool that has sufficient amounts of each skill set needed for all your projects, resource levelling is just about aligning your resources correctly among the projects and specific tasks.
But what if you are missing a resource with a particular skill for an ongoing or an upcoming project? Hiring a permanent employee takes time and assumes that the organization will be able to engage the new employee in its upcoming endeavours for an extended period of time. What if you only know of one project that requires the skill you are looking for? If the project will last for a couple of years, hiring a permanent employee could still make sense, but what if it is a short term project, or what if the project closes due to changing priorities?
Typically, in such cases companies hire contractors. If the project is closed, they would just give a contractor a 2-week termination notice and let them go. Is this solution optimal?
Well, in some cases a contractor that works on a single project can be occupied 8 hours a day every day, but most of the time their workload fluctuates. There are periods when they need to work overtime, but then there could be weeks of wasted funds, when you have to pay your contractor for 8 hours of work every day, but you only have 2-3 hours worth of workload to give them. For example, you hired a developer with a particular skill and they finished their work, but you cannot give them anything else to do until the integration testing is complete.
Then option 3 can be considered – you can outsource the work to a third party. If a vendor offers you service based on a time and material contract, you could end up paying only for the work that is actually done. Surely, you would need to establish good communication with the vendor to control their productivity and their rates may be higher than those of an independent contractor, but in the end you may end up saving money and getting the work done in a dedicated manner. Rather than engaging HR tools for interviewing candidates, you would engage procurement for contract negotiation.
PMAID Consulting Group could be your vendor for occasional project management work that cannot be assigned to your permanent staff. Whether it is a matter of resource levelling or work that requires expert level PM skills, we are here to help. Contact us for more information.