I was promised a team member for my project. Her manager agreed, her name went into the resource plan, and the plan was approved.
She was already working at 120 percent in her day job. She was also committed to another project, which had a resource plan of its own, approved in a different meeting.
What my project got, in practice, was about 20 percent of her.
None of the plans was wrong. Each one counted her correctly against its own scope. The day job counted her at full capacity, because it always does. Each project counted the share it had been promised. The problem only exists in the sum, and nobody owns the sum.
Why the yes was rational
The easy reading blames the manager who agreed. That reading misses what the structure asked of him. Refusing a project that leadership wants is visible and costs something today. Agreeing costs nothing today. The cost arrives months later, in someone else's plan, where it shows up as a slipping milestone and gets attributed to the project.
So the yes was the rational answer. He would give it again.
Why nobody adds it up
Resource plans are built per project, approved per project and reviewed per project. Each review asks whether this project has the people it was promised. No review asks how many times the same person has been promised. The day job does not appear in any of these plans, because it is not a project, and it takes the first claim on every hour.
The person in the middle knows the real number. She also has the least room to say it, because saying it means telling two project leads and her own manager that their plans do not work.
What it does to steering
The programme reports its resource plan as fulfilled. The names are there. The milestone slips, and the explanation offered is complexity, or scope, or dependencies. The capacity question never surfaces as a capacity question, so it never reaches the people who could decide it.
Which leaves one question open: who decides between the day job and the programme when both claim the same hours? In most organisations the answer is the person herself, every morning, alone. That is the real priority decision, and it is made at the lowest level with no authority behind it.
One number
Before your next programme review, ask for one figure: for each key person, the sum of everything they are committed to, day job included.
• If the sum is above 100 percent, the plan is a wish.
• If nobody can produce the sum, that is the finding.
Which of your plans is counting the same person as someone else's?
Cordula Buss · Plan A2C / Helping finance and programme leaders build steering logic that works.