A throw away comment in a recent meeting really made me sit up:
“We only have capacity for 20 projects in our business.”
The comment was made by a manager of a PMO who is keen to develop project management skills of others in the business still further.
I have often suggested we need to:
1. develop a list of key projects for the company
2. identify which ones do and which do not fit with the overall strategy
3. get rid of those that fall into 2 above focusing on key business projects
What is your project management capacity?
The capacity comment takes the above 3 points a very important stage further. It looks not only at the totality of the project list but the priorities and the resources. We often find that companies are not focussed on the key projects. There is a lack of information; such as project management capacity,including project priorities.
Key questions for those involved in project management
So, my key questions to you are what is your capacity and how does the current list match up to this in terms of numbers?
If you cannot answer, there is some serious work to be done
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Ron,
Failing to Understand an organizations capacity for work is a core failure mode.
Quite right Glen however, I have not come across many comanies who know the answer!
Ron
Ron, I seriously don’t understand what “We only have capacity for 20 projects in our business” actually means. Without context this statement seems to be meaningless. Can you elaborate?
Cheers, Shim.
Thanks for the query Shim.
Firstly, the context. We were talking to a person who is the manager of a PMO. We were getting some background on the approach to project management in the business. We discovered a lot in a short time and asked about the number of projects underway. The answer was the quote:
“We only have capacity for 20 projects in our business.”
What did he mean? He meant that:
*he knows the skills of his staff
*here is a ‘list’ of projects in the business – projects that need to be delivered
*he is able to look a the resources available in the business and the number of projects on the project list
*he is able, through all the above (plus his experience) to know the capacity of the team, to know how many projects they can manage and how many remain on the list.
Hope that helps Shim.
Ron
It does, mate, thanks.