We increasingly see, among our clients and around us, that operational teams are called on more and more for an ever-growing number of projects. Not to mention the recurring activities for which the quality of service must be maintained.
With projects multiplying, appointing a project manager for each project is a given, and they are sometimes even grouped into programmes with clear governance and often a dedicated delivery team.
But this is rarely the case for technical teams, particularly on infrastructure topics, which are often seen as prerequisites (network, security, related services, etc.) and are used as simple service centres.
The people in these teams then end up working, more or less directly, on an ever-larger number of projects.
The problem is that they receive requests (all urgent, of course) from every project manager, without any overall synchronisation or prioritisation.
As a result, prioritising topics becomes more complex, and since each project manager considers their topic the most important, operational staff move each topic forward in small steps to “show progress” to each of their contacts and keep the project managers “waiting patiently”.
On top of that comes an overall loss of efficiency, since spending 10 minutes on a topic six times is far less productive than devoting an hour to it.
The result: every project falls behind, schedules are very hard to keep under control and employees lose their sense of accomplishment.
How did we get here?
Every year, all IT departments follow the same budget calendar, which leads everyone’s priority projects to start at the same time, without any overall consistency. As these projects have dependencies between departments, resources end up with lots of priority actions to handle at the same time.
In the post-COVID period, companies enjoyed strong growth, which increased both the budgets allocated to projects and their ambition.
So recruitment is needed, but the market is tight. The ramp-up of teams does not keep pace with the objectives set at the start of the year, even though they were approved in the budget. Production capacity therefore falls short of demand, and schedules are not revised to take this into account.
Managers’ main constraint used to be securing a budget to ensure a project’s success. That no longer works. Having a budget is no longer enough; you also have to manage to turn it into resources.
What we recommend
The main risk concerns employees’ sense of accomplishment. It is essential (hello, Maslow’s pyramid), and it is important that everyone feels good in order to maintain team unity and a good level of productivity. The more the workload increases, the more you need to follow these three pillars:
- Adjust the workload
This is about finding the right compromise between ambition and scope on the one hand and the risk of overload on the other. If the workload is too high, the risk of not completing projects will be very high. Conversely, projects that lack ambition will have just as negative an impact on everyone’s motivation.
Sequencing projects. My actions are consistent with one topic, not 50.
Making sure that projects, schedules and workload are properly sized is essential. But it is not enough. You need to be clear about the stakes and the impact of the project. That way, everyone will have a clear guideline to follow, especially when pressure or workload increases because of unforeseen events.
- Provide the right tools and resources
If employees feel, rightly or wrongly, that they do not have the right tools (clear action tracking, clear allocation of roles, schedule, visibility of interdependencies, etc.) or the right resources (time, sponsorship, availability of other teams, availability of the right skills, etc.), they will not be in a position to carry out their tasks thoroughly or to a high standard.
It is therefore up to the project manager and to management to provide all the tools and resources needed to succeed.
- Ensure clear communication and make feedback easy
It is precisely when everyone is working intensively and no longer has any time that a feedback culture is most needed. It is therefore vital to maintain good communication with employees to make sure that everyone is still aligned with the objectives. The project manager’s role is to talk with each person to make sure of this.
To sustain engagement over time, it is also important to make it easy for employees to give feedback.
The sponsor also has a role to play in providing a clear, overall vision so that everyone feels part of the ambition.
“I am not cutting a stone, I am building a cathedral.”
A few things to apply from tomorrow to build good habits:
- I make sure that the main objective for the year is clear to each member of my team by asking them to rephrase it.
- I block out time slots and set up channels to receive feedback.
- At regular intervals, I check that the teams I work with are able to deliver the expected results.
Articles in the same series
From remote work to hybrid work: what lessons to learn to prepare the return to the office
What lessons can we learn from the unusual year we have just been through? Remote work: stop or carry on? What service offering should be proposed to employees? How can teams be helped to get to grips with this new way of working?
In this article, we take stock and give you a few ideas to help make the return to the office a success and better plan for what comes next.