Risks related to people represent the most numerous resource
risks, constituting nearly 20 percent of the entire database and over half of
the resource category.Any system subject to queues requires some
excess capacity to maximize throughput.Total Project Impact by Resource Root Cause Subcategories Outsourcing Late or Poor Output People Loss Money Limitation People Temp Loss People Queuing People Motivation People Late Start Outsourcing
Delayed Start
an earlier project.Most organizations optimize
operations by investing the bare minimum in specialized (and expensive) expertise, and in costly facilities and equipment.Motivation
issues are generally a consequence of diminishing interest on longduration projects or of interpersonal conflicts.The reasons for
permanent staff loss included resignations, promotions, reassignments
to other work or different projects, and staffing cutbacks.Queuing analysis is well understood, and it is relevant to a wide
variety of manufacturing, engineering, computer networks, and many
other business systems.Motivation: Loss of team cohesion and interest, typical
of long projects
Loss of staff permanently had by far the highest overall
category impact, and an average slip of seven weeks.Most projects rely on at least some special
expertise that is shared with other projects, such as system architects
needed at the start, testing personnel needed at the end, and other specialists needed throughout the project.Discovering
these risks in advance is difficult, but good record keeping and trend
analysis are useful in setting realistic project expectations.A typical reason for short-term staff loss was
a customer problem (a so-called hot site) related to the deliverable from
110 I D E N T I F Y I N G A N D M A N A G I N G P R O J E C T R I S K
American Management Association o www.amanet.org
Figure 5-1.This leads to a
potential scarcity of these individuals or facilities and to contention for
access between projects.Queuing problems represented about another quarter of the
people-related risks in the PERIL database.If an expert happens to be free
when a project is ready for the work to start, there is no problem, but if
he or she has five other projects queued up already when your project
needs attention, you will come to a screeching halt while you wait in
line.Optimizing organizational
resources needed for projects based only on cost drives out necessary
capacity and results in project delay.The rolling sledgehammer creates a cycle that selfperpetuates and is hard to break.Motivation issues were the smallest subcategory, at only a bit
more than 5 percent of the people-related resource risks.However,
these risks had an average impact in excess of nine weeks, among the
highest for any of the subcategories in the PERIL database.Loss: Permanent staff member loss to the project due to
resignation, promotion, reassignment, health, or other
reasons
2.Queuing: Slip due to other commitments for needed
resources or expertise
4.Other reasons for short-term staff loss included illness, travel problems, and organizational reorganizations.Staff joining the project late had a number of
root causes, but the most common was a situation aptly described by
one project leader as the rolling sledgehammer.As a consequence, any following
project gets a slow and ragged start, with key people beginning their
contributions to the new project only when they can break free of the
earlier one.People risks are subdivided into five subcategories:
I D E N T I F Y I N G P R O J E C T RE S O U R C E R I S K 109
1.Late start: Staff not available at project start; often because
of the late finish of previous projects
5.Even when these people become available, there may
be additional delay because the staff members coming from a late
project are often burned out from the stress and long hours typical of
an overdue project.Temporary loss: Short-term staff loss due to illness,
hot site, support priorities, or other reasons
3.Permanent staff
loss represented about one-third of the people risks.Temporary loss of project staff was the next most common
people-related risk, with roughly another quarter of the total.Its overall
impact was lower than for permanent staff loss, causing an average slip
of just under four weeks.The average schedule
impact due to queuing was four weeks.Late starts when key staff are unavailable at the beginning of
a project also caused a good deal of project delay.Although only about
10 percent of the people-related resource risks, their average impact
was well over six weeks.Whenever a prior
project is late, some, perhaps even all, of the staff for the new project
are still busy working to get it done.