– Wow, this is a lot of data you keep on your Visual Planning Whiteboard! Very thorough! It looks like you are really into measuring here! And the purpose is to make sure you are resourcing your projects properly?(Guest)
– Yeah, that has been one of the goals for us to improve the resoruce management across ur portoflio of projects. We need to prove that we can measure the information so it can be analyzed and used for improvements like resource management. (PMO manager)
– So, we have about twenty different areas here, each represented by at least one document glued to the board, excel spreadsheets, visio diagrams, word tables, some prinouts from the material maagement system….(PM)
– Yepp. This is it! The idea is that all information should be visible here. Anyone can go in here and see and update the information immediately. (PMO Manager)
– So how are you working with updating the information then? (Guest)
– Well, after each weeks standup meeting, the PM brings home all the documents on the board to their desk. There they update the necessary documents, print them out and hang them up here again.
– Sometimes we are also replanning based on the feedback. Then we do that first and get approvals. Then we hang the new print out back so they are correct. (PM)
– How many documents can be needed to update? (Guest)
– Up to 40 I think…(PM)
– Well, not all are updated every time! (PMO Manager)
– And the approval processes, how long can they take? (Guest)
– It depends. From a few hours to several weeks….We need to follow the governance model….(PMO manager)
– So then there is no document on the Whiteboard? (Guest)
– Correct (PM)
– So where do I go with an update then? (Guest)
– You just go to the PM directly and ask them to update. Some poeple just send an email so we can update. (PM)
– So, for resoruce management, how many of the areas on the whiteboard relates to Resource Management?
– Well, we haven´t come there yet. So you will not really find anything on that. We are looking at other parameters right now. (PMO Manager)
– Some projects are having some information on resources. And the Line Managers that are interested can participate at the projects stand up meetings to listen and give input. (PM)
– How many projects do you run that shares resources at the same time? (Guest)
– About 90. (PMO Manager)
…