Project soft skill solutions for limited project resources 

Senior project managers may encounter challenges in securing sufficient project resources, including budget, personnel, and technology.

And where there are limited project resources, this impacts negatively on their ability to effectively execute projects and meet stakeholder expectations. 

Adequate resourcing, particularly human resources, is a perennial headache within many organisations and the projects they run, as they strive to do more with less. Unfortunately, the desire to bear down on costs, if too aggressive, can drive them up in terms of the adverse effect on quality, quantity, and time. And in these situations, project managers and project coordinators can often find themselves competing for resource. 

Attracting resources 

In matrix management environments, where project team members work on several different projects and do non-project work for their line manager; requests from those who have the strongest emotional bank accounts, in terms of trust, goodwill and emotional connection, with the project team member and their line manager, often get priority or discretion.  

And discretion is key here, for the degree, timeliness and quality of support offered, is always to an extent within the project team member or line manager’s gift.  

Strong emotional connections magnify limited project resource impact. 

So, where there are competing demands for resource, the quality of the working relationship you have built with the line manager or team member will heavily impact the priority given to your tasks and requests for resource, and in some cases the degree and quality of the engagement with the work. 

By making it a rewarding experience to work with you, through the degree of respect, consideration, empathy, understanding, support, and appreciation you show, in all of your dealings with people, you create a win-win with regard to the work you do together. 

And in an increasingly overloaded and over worked workplace, where much of the communication now is automated, people appreciate and respond to that.   

Side-loading resource time 

Over time, this generates a fund of trust, goodwill, and a strong emotional connection. This in turn makes a huge positive impact upon your ability to access, retain and even side-load additional resource time, where resources generally are very stretched.

And by side loading, I mean attracting more resource than one otherwise would. By line managers and team member often choosing to prioritise and start your work sooner, and spend more time on it, as a direct consequence of the working relationship and emotional connection you have built with them.    

The tighter resources become, the stronger the side-loading effect. 

Ironically, the more acute the lack of resource generally, in matrix management situations, the more powerful the use of soft skills and the attractive power of positive emotional connections become.  

When others competing for resource complain and escalate their demands for resource they make a fundamental mistake. And when they sometimes seek to coerce or manipulate line managers and their team members into providing support for their projects, they only make things worse.

Fortunately, when those with whom you are competing for resource with make these mistakes, they not only generate resistance, but make working with and for you, on your tasks, even more attractive. 

Converting suppliers into a virtual team  

Understanding the strengths, weaknesses, dependencies, constraints and risks to your project supply chains is critical. Developing excellent working relationships with those in a position to influence supply is key. As is understanding the aggregate impact upon your project’s capacity to deliver.  

Take the time to build relationships and an understanding of your supply chains. This allows you to build in realistic lead times and contingencies into project plans and set appropriate expectations and negotiate acceptable deadlines with stakeholders. 

Supply chain intelligence. 

Unexpected human and material resource shortages are a fact of project management life. And with key people fatigued, sick, seconded elsewhere or about to leave the business, project performance feels the strain.

Similarly, acquisition or failure of companies supplying materials and services are very disruptive. As are failures to retain supply contracts or key people by suppliers.

Finally, when third party suppliers suffer supply chain issues themselves or implement disruptive new systems etc, successful project delivery is jeopardised. 

Awareness and understanding of what is going on, or what is about to impact your supply chain, both for internal resource and external is helpful. Allowing the project manager to influence triage decisions in the supply chain, through the business relationships they have built. 

Leveraging trust, good will and emotional connections. 

If you have been actively building strong working relationship through the use of emotional bank accounts, you will also have a broad and deep reach, in terms of your ability to and access help and support at short notice across the project landscape and beyond.  

The goodwill and the strong emotional connections accrued within these relationships enhances project manager adaptability, flexibility, and time to recovery. These are particularly valuable in the face of short to no notice resource issues.

Strong emotional bank accounts, as evidenced by goodwill and powerful emotional connections also support the project manager, by allowing them to quickly pull in options, suggestions for workarounds, help, support, and influence etc from their network.  

The quality of those relationships also makes a difference. The difference between a workaround being acceptable or not, to team members and stakeholders. They also determine just how much of ‘the extra mile’ those involved in workarounds are prepared to go, in supporting the project manager with the resource issue.    

Resilience in the face of limited project resources

Resource constraints can be stressful when they undermine plans and threaten deadlines. Soft skills can help build personal resilience and team resilience; making constraints more likely to produce pressure not stress.  

They can also, through the development of goodwill and strong emotional connections retain resources and acquire and side-load more resources than otherwise might be the case.  

The much better communication which comes with superior relationships and active listening also gives early warning of resource shortages and pinch-points. Allowing Project managers to factor these into plans and mitigate them much earlier. 

It ain’t what you’ve got it’s the way that you use it.  

Learning to manage your time and the time of others is an iterative thing. There are a wealth of methods and techniques available and project managers must develop both the breadth and depth of their understanding, mastery, and practice over time.  

Basic techniques must be learned and practiced to the point where they are habit. Before repeating the learning cycle with intermediate and then more advanced methods and techniques later. A project manager must also be master of their own time before they can realistically hope to manage the time of others effectively. The latter is a core competency. 

Why less is sometimes more with limited project resources

With human resources, understanding the ebb and flow of availability is key. As is knowing how to access resource when you need it, how and when best to use it, and how to ensure the experience for those providing the resource, and doing the work for you, is a positive and rewarding one.   

When you have excellent working relationships with those working on your projects, engagement, buy-in, flexibility and willingness to go the extra mile are generally higher than the otherwise might be the case – as is sometimes the quality of the work. This often results in higher productivity, which goes some way to off-setting overall resource shortages.  

Conclusion

Having the project soft skills, necessary to access and achieve greater productivity with the resources at your disposal, means your projects are more likely to survive and thrive in environments where human resources are stretched very thin.  

Unfortunately, for those who have not yet acquired those project soft skills, such as emotional bank account management, and do not understand how to optimise human resource access, utilisation, and productivity, there will always be resource constraints.