How can you adapt to limited resources in project management?

Considering carving out a part of your budget to spend on Organizational Change Management (OCM) Resources can actually save you money and time in the long run. A dedicated OCM team can help address resistance and increase adoption, helping you to realize your business value quicker.

When resources are limited, explore project management software if it's not already being utilized. It may be a more cost-effective alternative to adding headcount to the project. The most robust iteration of these tools allow teams to assign deliverables to individual contributors on the team. This helps to make communication and accountability transparent and asynchronous allowing everyone to see who is accountable for when, when deliverables are due, road mapping, connecting to team/company goals, and more. That level of accountability and transparency can provide serious productivity gains by reducing needless communication.

The keys are resource management/allocation, road mapping, and realistic deadlines. Assess your teams strengths and capacity. Use that to decide what tasks they are deployed on, their volume of work, and ensure their work stream is concise. Multi-tasking and context switching will crush productivity. Roadmap all deliverables and milestones, including marking out clear dependencies. Use this to inform workload across the team, personal accountability, and creating realistic dates for all deliverables and completion. If due dates are not reasonable, it will either result in not meeting due dates (over promise and under deliver), or burn out that will lead to delays down the road in the current project or in the future.

Enhance stakeholder communication so that all resources and cross-functional teams comprehensively understand project priorities and anticipated challenges that may impact the projected timeline.

The key is having a robust clear plan with a clearly defined scope . The clearer the understanding is , and where you want to get to, the roadmap of the project will determine how you perform , the more time spent on making the plan effective and having clarity on the goals/ milestones will show/highlight any slippage and deviation. The better the buy in from all stakeholders the more coherent the plan will become and achieving the targets becomes less stressful and drives improvements and performance. Win together, learn together , improve as one .

For me there is never a project which is resourced 100%, having manageable limited resources can really focus the business and team in to deliver the best outcome prioritising what is the most important. As long as there are realistic achievable targets and enough staff to achieve then you still will succeed.

This should have started this way at the beginning of the project, what are people good at what are they not so confident in. Unless you have time to learn with the project set people targets which are in their wheel house but still allow them to grow and challenge themselves. Managing a project in clear direction and genuine respect and praise to the team.

Communication and engagement are key, but keep communication real. People want to be connected to mission and purpose, even if the reality isn't always flowers and sunshine. Be real about business needs, expectations, budget constraints, etc. People appreciate authenticity and are more likely to battle through a tough project and aggressive deadlines when they feel trusted and engaged with the good, bad, and the ugly.