Distribute tasks between resources & projects

In this serie of articles devoted to visual management in project management, today we will discuss how to use the fever chart to manage a project portfolio.

Talking about visual management … Let’s take the graph below and see what we can observe:

visual management, fever chart project portfolio

In most of the cases, you will rightly see that two projects are in trouble. They are not late (see the previous article) but are over-consuming the protection defined.

What are the options available?

  • Can we take resources from projects 4/5/6 to help projects 1 & 7?
  • Should we start the project 9?
  • What benefits would we have from taking resources of 9 to allocate them to 1 & 7?
  • A last (more playful) option sometimes emerges. We could freeze projects 1 & 7 and take resources to 4/5/6, so they finish even faster and then put everyone back on 1 & 7.  It’s more playful, but it can work. 😉

During the trainings, sometimes some participant tell me that it is not possible to mix resources.

Yes… However, we often observe that the projects are different but that the range for designing the project is ultimately quite similar.

So, if you take the previous chart, you will find that P1 / 2/7/8 have some proximity.

Thus, even if P4 / 5/6 can’t help, maybe P2 / P8 can help.

In the following article, we’ll see how this fever chart can help you make history for your project.

In the meantime, if you have any questions or if you want to discuss with our experts on this topic, fell free to contact us! contact@agilea-group.com