Confront the ghosts of past projects and nightmare allocations that derail your deliverables. This Halloween, we're talking resource management gone wrong.
Who's afraid of things that go bump in the night?
Sometimes, it's a monster under your bed. Other times - it's the sound of a spanner being thrown in the works of all your best laid plans and good intentions. And when you wake up, the nightmare just keeps on going.
Here are nine resource management horror stories that will make your blood run cold and your heart start racing (and what to do if the nightmare sounds a little bit too much like your reality...)
Or ‘When Unsinkable Projects Go Under’
Kate Winslet and Leo DiCaprio may have had 25 years to dry off now, but the Titanic still looms large in our collective consciousness. The unsinkable ship. The unforeseen iceberg. The hubris.
The drama of this real-life tragic tale comes from the gap between grand expectations and rude reality – and that can feel eerily familiar in project management. How many of you have started a project thinking it’ll be plain sailing but seen it sink below the waves? A sinking ship that sucks down money, morale, and client goodwill as it goes under?
What you need is a clearer view of the ice field ahead, so you can steer your project to safety.
Resource clashes. Skills gaps. Scope change. Bottleneck ahead! Resource management tools greatly increase data visibility through reporting and dashboards, so you have a 360° understanding of what’s coming up.
Survival tip: Make resource management your trusty lookout, spotting icebergs before they sink your ship. Increase visibility into your projects and people with centralized resource management data and systems.
Or ‘When You Make a Mismatched Monster’
You want to build a well-oiled project machine. A crack team of experts that delivers a dream outcome. But – instead – you leave it too late to request the resources you need. And your dream team turns into a monster…
It’s like Dr Frankenstein was in charge of your project allocations. You’re vacuuming up leftover resource capacity like so many severed limbs, piecing together something that technically resembles a project team, but it doesn’t quite work.
This is the difference between reactive and proactive resourcing. Your decisions are based on desperation to make something - anything - work.
You end up with mismatched skills, project delays, and outcomes that are as cobbled together as your patchwork team. Your project lumbers slowly along, just about holding together… until it falls apart.
Survival tip: Create a machine, not a monster, by writing a resource allocation plan ASAP. Get planning early so you can secure the resources you need to succeed or recruit in good time.
Or ‘When Past Failures Won’t Stop Haunting You’
Ever feel like something bad is going to happen but you can’t be sure what? Like something malevolent is lurking, waiting to trip you up?
It could be the ghosts of projects past… Trapped with a lesson to teach you, these specters of previous failures can’t pass to the other side until you learn. OH, WHY WON’T YOU LEARN?!
Every project is an opportunity to do things better next time. No one does things perfectly. But too many organizations are embarrassed by failure. They brush learnings under the carpet. They bury their heads in the sand. But unlike your boss’s emu head, these ghosts won’t stay buried. You have to confront them.
You’ll keep being haunted until you ditch the blame game and take the FAIL acronym to heart – a failure is your First Adventure in Learning.
Implement project retrospectives – like they do in Agile – to talk about what worked and what didn’t. No Ouija board needed. Then document them for future reference. And check past project data – like budget and schedule variance – to understand any changes you need to make.
Survival tip: Use historical data, project retrospectives, and lessons learned to take the fear out of forecasting and exorcize those ghosts for good.
Or ‘The Revolving Door of Doom’
It’s murder in the boardroom! The C-suite thinks they have no choice. But it’s not a pretty sight…
Relentlessly cutting budgets. Slashing staff numbers. It’s a bloodbath. And what makes it worse is that layoffs could have been avoided.
Because what your CEO – Chief Execution Officer – doesn’t realize is that they could have saved money through better resource utilization instead of chopping heads. And the COO – Chief Ouch Officer – is oblivious that they’re laying off one team while another is desperately trying to fill staffing gaps.
While redundancies might make superficial or short-term sense, they’re actually very costly. The revolving door or reactive hiring and firing incurs unnecessary redundancy and recruitment costs simultaneously. Plus it damages staff morale, engagement, productivity, your employer brand…ARGGGGGGGHHHHH!
A better way is to engage in strategic capacity planning to understand resource supply and demand and match it more accurately, avoiding the need for layoffs. Plus monitoring resource utilization rates to spot trends in demand that let you recruit or redeploy people as needs dictate.
Survival tip: Don’t give your employees the chop unless there’s no other alternative. Use resource management techniques and data to avoid costly layoffs. (And, in all seriousness, people who get laid off experience a terrifying range of health consequences, so please don’t do it if you don’t need to!)
Or ‘When The GOAT Stealer Comes to Town’
Shudder. Like a Puerto Rican shepherd guarding your flock, you want to protect your team from every outside risk.
Your team members are – in your humble opinion – the Greatest Of All Time. But something is coming for your GOATs. The Resource Chupacabra. NOOOOOOO! Without warning, a beast surfaces and steals your MVPs, ripping the heart out of your work family and sucking the lifeblood from your projects.
We hear this horror story a lot at Runn. The big bad resource management team coming to steal people from their rightful teams.
But nothing could be further from the truth. Resource managers aren’t the bogeyman, woman, or mythical livestock sucker of folklore – they’re actually your allies, champions of individual and team success.
In reality, they don’t steal your GOATs, they help you find them – matching you up with the best people for your projects, regardless of where they’re from. And they help match your flock to opportunities that excite and engage them the most. It’s a big-picture win that works on lots of levels.
Survival tip: Resource managers aren’t monsters. Dispel that myth – and embrace the magic they can bring to your projects.
Or ‘When People Get Spent Like Matches’
No sexism intended here – we just like a bit of alliteration. The story of the burned-out boy could apply to anyone. And it truly is a terrible tale for our times. 52% of workers say they feel burnt out by work.
It’s such a serious problem that we don’t feel like putting a spooky spin on this one – it’s already horrifying enough.
What’s the deal with some organizations – and even whole sectors – thinking it’s ok to use people like matches, expecting them to burn bright until their light goes out, then discarding and replacing them?!
It’s terrible news for the people affected by burnout, who can lose anything from their mental health to their career. And it also spells bad news for employers – given that burnout leads to lower productivity, higher absenteeism, and increased turnover.
If burning out and replacing employees is just business as usual in your organization, we suggest you make like the Disney villain you are and take a long hard look at yourself in your magic mirror. Booo! Hiss!
But if you’ve got a problem with burnout because you simply don’t know when people are working too much, a resource management platform can help.
It lets you see capacity and workloads at a glance, so you can quickly see when employees are nearing their limits. You can then reallocate work more equally. Or, if there’s no one else to help, you know you need to recruit more of the same resource.
Survival tip: Keep resources burning bright with balanced workloads and fair distribution of work. Keep an eye on organizational capacity, as well as team and individual utilization rates.
Or ‘When Puzzle Pieces Won’t Stop Moving’
Ok. It’s not an undead army or blood-sucking dessert worm. But a jigsaw can be scary.
Have you ever woken up in a sweat from a nightmare that doesn’t want to end? Maybe you’re running away from a chainsaw-wielding maniac but your legs won’t move. Or you’re trying to get through a door and another one appears behind it?
These midnight manifestations are a sign you’re frustrated and stuck. So why not a never-ending jigsaw? One with moving pieces that slip out of reach? With holes that change shape just as you find the perfect fit…
See where we’re going with this? Resource management IS THAT HAUNTED JIGSAW.
You have the project, its schedule, and the people and skills it needs. Plus the people, their availability, and their capacity. And they’re always changing and moving – and that’s a nightmare for so many businesses.
But not with a resource management team, equipped with the right resource management tools. Projects run closer to budget and schedule forecasts, which protects your profit margin. Plus, by matching the right people to the project, you improve the likelihood of positive project outcomes and client satisfaction, boosting repeat custom and brand reputation.
Survival tips: Make Runn your secret weapon. See every piece, in real-time, so you can put them together in the best way possible.
Or ‘When Scopes Creep’
It starts innocently enough. You’re stirring your cauldron, carefully mixing in a jug of Java skills, a pinch of Python, a soupcan of SEO… Like a master alchemist, you are in complete control of your creation. And it’s bubbling with brilliance. You’ve blended schedule, skills, and seniority. Your budget and timeline are balanced.
But what’s this? The client has a ‘tiny tweak’? Your manager needs to 'quickly borrow’ one of your resources? ‘Wouldn’t it be great if it could be bilingual…?’ What the actual…??!!
Your carefully curated cauldron has turned into a sloppy free-for-all. And it isn’t just your potion simmering, you’re at boiling point too. This is where you need to tighten up your resource management processes to prevent scope creep and unchecked changes.
Change request controls stop scopes from creeping by requiring formal approval for any changes after a project starts. And project prioritization techniques will ensure any changes are assessed according to their strategic alignment – not just the current pet project of your new department head.
Survival tip: Don’t let bubble bubble turn to trouble. Keep a lid on that cauldron unless there’s a good reason – and change authorization – to change the ingredients!
Or ‘How to Revive Dead-End Roles and Bring Your Business Back to Life’
Ah, the zombie army. A grey brigade of barely conscious workers, clocking in physically while they check out mentally.
Unchallenged, unstimulated, and unmotivated, they shuffle from task to task, terrifying slow, and frighteningly unproductive.
These aren’t bad people. Once upon a time, they had energy, ideas, and ambition. But their work story wasn’t destined for a happily ever after. Because they have no autonomy at work, no trust, no excitement, and no prospects. And their will to work just – pffft – vanished.
If your business is laboring with a zombie workforce, you don’t need a necromancer to bring them back to life. It’s your resource management skills you need to raise, not the dead.
Start by getting to know your resources better. Get curious. Find out what excites them. What blocks them in their current role? Look for opportunities to connect them with meaningful work to get their heart racing again.
Then think about role design. Are your roles an uninspiring grind? Work with people to redesign roles and them more autonomy. They need to see processes through from end to end, take ownership, and feel impactful.
Survival tip: People are your most important asset. Don’t grind them down, build them up! Reconnect people with meaningful work and see productivity and employee engagement grow.
If any of these resource management nightmares ring true for you, don’t wait for the full-blown horror show to unfold. Start your free 14-day Runn trial to see what we can do for you.
Or pick up the phone and talk to Runn. Unlike vampires – and so many outdated people management practices – we don’t bite.
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