After getting the wrong people on the wrong project one too many times, I decided to get some thoughts down on how to make the right decision when allocating team members to a project.

I spent most of my manager years in software engineering, in a consulting agency. Therefore profitability and client-specific items weigh heavier. Adjust yours accordingly to what makes most sense for your business and team.

Weighting / Importance (5 = critical, 1 = noteworthy)

Budget & Profitability / 5

This largely depends on which types of people or roles you accounted for during your project costing phase. You shouldn’t have to allocate more experienced people for easy work, since they’d likely burn the budget. Make notes for next time and give feedback to your business development team if it didn’t work out.

Skill / 5

The skill has to fit the requirement. All of your people are at different skill levels, so it’s important to understand the work upfront and then match that with the best fit (as far as possible). This is most likely addressed during the costing phase.

Client preference / 5

If your team members are in the position to build client relationships, the clients do often develop a liking in certain individuals. This is a large factor to consider and makes client management, and the managing of expectations a lot easier (since that relationship can be leveraged).

Strategic impact / 5

What decides how strategic a project is? It’s a combination of various things, decided by the business. Among these are revenue, longevity, stability, productization and future business.

Continuity / 4

If the work is maintenance related, try and use the same people that worked the original project, or has worked with the client before. It means they have the context, and can get the job done sooner. This also enables you to avoid the on-boarding overhead that goes into using a person that is not familiar with the project. It does become tricky over time though. Project fatigue can set in after a few months.

Previous subject matter experience / 3

If a project comes along that is similar to something you’ve done before (assuming your business does a variety of different things), try and use the same people that initially worked on it (or subject matter experts). The past experience is valuable, and the lessons learnt get applied almost immediately in these cases.

Career experience / 3

Try and mix up the experience levels of the scheduled team members. This will help your team grow, reduces bus factor and aid you when you want to do team member rotation.

Fit to the team / 3

Some people work better together. You know who they are in your teams. Where possible, try and schedule them together. It will reduce communication overhead and likely deliver better results. Make sure you leverage the rapport people have with one another.

Geographical considerations / 3

If you are managing a remote team, but have some people located geographically close to one another, try and schedule them on the same project. In-person communication will always trump remote communication. Similarly, if you have people geographically close to client offices, it might make sense to use them on projects for that client.

Project fatigue / 2

Sometimes people just need a break from a project. This is generally a tough one, as the continuity and past experience on the project is valuable. The solution for this is never clear cut. It’s a balancing act in the moment, of what is best for the business as well as best for the person.

Leave / 1

Rated as low importance solely because leave is generally dealt with ad hoc. Try to ask your team members to book leave in between projects, as far as possible, but not immediately after a launch.

Other things to keep in mind

There are some additional considerations that may impact your scheduling decisions:

Skills migration

We have to assume that most people want to grow and learn, therefore it makes sense to cater for that when scheduling people to work on things. However, you have to think about:

• Budget: Try to pair subject matter experts with “trainees” to make sure you still deliver in budget.
• Time: Related to budget, but the project still have to finish on time.
• Choice: Before you schedule your team on a project, try to gauge which team member really wants to grow in that area.
• Morale: Keep a close eye on the team morale, since the project velocity might get affected if a “trainee” is introduced (meaning the rest of the team will have to carry a bit of extra weight).

Context switching

If you are going to move your team members around onto different projects, try and make the duration a good length of time. Context switching can be expensive, since time is wasted if someone has to keep getting up to speed.

Only move team members around if you really have to, have no other option, or the opportunity that arises is worth the cost.

Hopefully these thoughts make your scheduling decisions a bit clearer.

👋 Ruan – co-founder of Prescience