Seema Sonkiya: Management of Apportioned Efforts or Project Admin Activities

Article based on PMBOK 4 recommendations of apportioned efforts.

When project and product scope is identified, next step is to develop detailed project schedule. It is very important to identify discrete efforts (DE), level of efforts (LoE) and apportioned efforts (AE) very carefully to develop reliable and achievable schedule. Definition of these efforts can be found in another article: http://seema-sonkiya.blogspot.in/2012/03/project-schedule-development-important.html

As to recollect, AE efforts are project management activities which are independent from DE and play a crucial role in project and product quality. Example of apportioned activities but not limited to daily stand up meetings, timely updating of MPP and burn down chart, developing MOM of a meeting, developing and communicating status reports, updating project communication in timely manner, creating team directory, documenting ground rules, developing project organization chart, updating risk register, writing mails to client etc.

All these AE efforts are identified and delegated to team members as per their profile, work responsibilities and skills. Most of these activities are supposed to perform by the project manager or by the person under supervision of project manager, but project manager need input from other team members to perform AE and sometime he/she does not get this information due to other high value priorities of DE.

These apportioned efforts are performed to ensure that DE efforts are delivered effectively and refer to work that need to be accomplished to deliver product service and results and independent of DE.

We all know that AE identification and include in project schedule is very crucial but sometime these activities are overlooked due to many reasons like; but not limited to:

1.       Rushing planned AE to meet schedule objective like team in tight deadline pressure and priority is set to high for some DE and associated LoE and team intentionally overlooked AE.

2.       Project manager is heavily busy in customer communication, which included long discussion and not having time to perform identified AE and as current time priority is high to become involve in communication with key stakeholders.

3.       Some project team members are tightly involved to meet current sprint deadline because some obstacles encountered and resolution resulted in tight work pressure. As a result they are not willing to perform AE, for example team members are not providing timely status that is needed to update burn down chart daily and key stakeholders are not communicated properly about remaining outstanding work in timely manner.

4.       Project Manager is on leave and other responsible people are busy in other DE activities. When project manager joins office there is long list of AE backlog items that are performed in daily basis. Now project manager become busy in communication with key stakeholders and able to perform only those AE efforts that are planned in current time period. Past activities are overlooked.

5.       Project team members are less educated about the importance of AE.

6.       Project team members do believe that success of their work will be measured by the DE and associated LoE and less interested to perform AE.

7.       Project manager got early morning call from client and attended from home and in result could not reach to office in time and some planned AE activities skipped as when he/she reached to office other efforts priorities become high.

8.       Some urgent DE efforts are need to be delivered next day and some team members along with project manager stayed late night or till early morning and when completed they just left and they did not update plan what has been accomplished. Now suppose other team members who come on time next day and their work is dependent on what has been accomplished last day. Team members who worked late did not come on time and next day work result in chaos.

9.       90% of time of project manager goes in communication with project stakeholders and involvement of project manager in high value priority communication is also one of key reason of AE overlooked.

All these examples shows that we need to devise a methodology in which in any circumstances whether predicted on not, these AE are not overlooked. Overlooking may result serious consequences; for example establishing and maintaining team directory is an important AE. As an example, we assume a scenario, mobile number of a team member gets changed and updating is overlooked.  As a result project manager will not be able to contact that team member, if he/she is on leave and some critical situation arises and few information from him/her needed.

Here I would like to suggest a solution that we have implemented and in result we are working in hassle free environment and it took stress away from everyone involved in the project. Major benefits of this solution is that we are meeting deadlines more than 99% of time because it helped us a lot in removing impediments.

Most of the AE activities that frequently get overlook include documentation that have been identified, accepted and accomplished and needed for further reference. My recommendation is to include a role who is involved to assist project manager to perform these AE.  We should develop guidelines or rules of engagement between PM roles and the admin roles.

Admin role make sure that all of the AE activities performed in timely manner regardless of circumstances. They work under supervision of project manager.

Here I would like to refer how we implemented the solution. I am involved to manage more than one project and for those projects two admin person appointed who work in shifts. First admin come early in morning and other one join office in post lunch to ensure availability of admin role all the time and also help to coordinate time zone problems. Morning admin, who reach to office approx one hour early from other project team members, refer the MPP, burn down chart & communication that is received from client and develop and/or update detailed assignment sheet for the team members may be with the help of project manager. Second admin person who come in post lunch first understand the current situation from morning admin and involved till late hours. As a result both early and post lunch admin make sure that AEs never overlook in any time and help team to perform as there is someone who is doing AE all the time.

They Run errands where and if necessary, to help the team focus their work on their high value functions and activities. It also helps to greatly reduce uncertainties and gives an environment where risks and issues are identified in timely manner and documented. As these members get mix in project team members, help project manager in observation and conversation tool to manage project team members. They help project manager to provide accurate information how well team is performing collectively and individually. They are authorized in leadership as a representative of project manager especially in absence of project manager.

As we know project manager involved 90% of time in communication with project stakeholders, involvement of admin roles make sure that these activities are performed without worrying about AE that has feature to get overlooked.

Our admin roles assist project managers to perform all of the admin work like updating MPP, burn down, risk register, observing team member’s attitude, writing correspondence to client whenever needed etc.

One of the main goal of project manager is to focus team members to their core work and this solution is perfect in achieving that and leads to team members satisfaction and result in less staff attrition, as we know most of team members especially technical one are less interested in AEs.

Seema Sonkiya