How to overcome little to no project resources

Whether this has to do with not having the latest technologies, or dealing with underperforming team members, or even both, project managers must still understand that their job is to identify the state of a project’s resources, and move on in the work process regardless of said state.
Here are 10 tips on how you and your project team can overcome little to no resources and stay focused on bringing the project itself into fruition and create something great for clients.

“When your team lacks one or more project resources, it’s important to stick to one solution as you work towards completion,” says Tina Cortez, a leadership blogger at Writinity and Last minute writing. “If you try to jump from one solution to another, it’ll only complicate things and slow down production.”

Every project will feel the heat from upcoming deadlines. However, you cannot worry about schedules when you have production to worry about more. Therefore, stick with targeted timeframes, and let everything else fall into place.

While overtime work is not a novelty in the project management realm, sometimes teams will want to put in the extra hours to complete a project. However, your main job is to guarantee the productivity of overtime hours, to prevent employee (and management) burnout.

Problems may arise in any project; but trying to hide behind everyday tasks and avoid communicating the problem are not how to solve problems. Therefore, do not be afraid to tell your team and your client that you’re facing a lack of resources. When coming the problems, you’ll most likely get all hands on deck to find a practical solution.

Don’t want to overbudget? No problem!

Just examine and reexamine the budget to ensure that your project will not hurt it. Plus, make sure that your financial department knows the agreed-upon budget, and they give you the greenlight to continue production as planned.

Now, distinguishing between relevant and irrelevant business aspects may not be easy, but that can save the project from failure. In that case, a project manager should renegotiate consultant contracts since clients will often charge you without giving any substantial contribution to the project development.

It is also important to prioritise tasks based on importance. The more fundamental tasks must be placed higher on your list of priorities. You can tackle the fundamental tasks in phases, while other (and minor) tasks can be done in bulk.

Lacking human resources or time does not mean that the project should be scrapped. Rather, reach out for external help to avoid disputes with the client. Consider the following options:

• Hire a third-party provider for highly-specialised tasks. OR,
• Hire freelancers for less demanding activities (i.e. administration and paperwork).

“When you lack certain resources, then that can potentially be a transformative thing, depending on the situation faced by your team,” says James Oxford, a project manager at Draft beyond and Research papers UK. “But one thing is for sure: With new situations come new goals. Therefore, whenever new goals arise, let your team know about changes to operational procedures. Plus, clarify new objectives and discuss expected deliverables, so that everyone on the team to be on board with the newer phase of production.”

Finally, should you need to postpone non-critical activities, you have to get permission from your client FIRST. Not only will this strategy allow you to concentrate on more essential activities, but it also does not upset your client by not communicating with them before postponing something.

Now, while things can change during production, you and your team can still be ready to conclude the project successfully. So, don’t let yourselves fall into complacency. Keep track of your resources; and whenever something is lacking, analyse the whole situation and fix the problem. And pretty soon, your project will thrive no matter the resources that you have at hand.

About the author:
Ashley Halsey is a writer at Finance assignments and Gum essays. As a professional writer, she has been involved in many writing projects nationwide. In her spare time, she enjoys reading and traveling with her two children.