Bottleneck Analysis
Bottleneck Analysis, Without Knowing It
“Almost every organization today faces the challenge of resource shortages. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of good ideas for projects, but there is significant pressure to complete projects to get products into the marketplace as quickly as possible. As a result, most organizations find themselves working on a large number of projects concurrently and trying to manage their limited resources across all the projects in their portfolio.” This excerpt is taken from the opening paragraph of Chapter 6 titled Effective Resource Management – Debunking the Myths in the Managing Multiple Projects textbook. When going through the reading, this text caught my eye significantly. It’s very true just in its simplicity of statements, and taking each sentence in account offers great information. Every organization does face challenges with resource shortages. There are always good ideas; however, there is a lot of pressure to complete projects to get products into the marketplace. The faster you can get the products into the marketplace, the better. When this happens, especially in a diversified environment, an organization tends to spread itself very thinly across multiple areas to try to meet the demand of more products to eventually produce more profitability. There are generally three ways in which organizations deal with multiproject environments.
The first solution is to hire additional personnel to meet the resource demands of the different projects. This is the “myth” of “we can hire our way out of the problem.” I used to work for a pool company. Although this company didn’t produce anything necessarily, we still had multiple projects and were spread too thinly. Basically, we were a service company that serviced pools and spas, and sometime the general plumbing problems for commercial properties. Anders Pool Company in North Alabama is known for their great skill in solving problems related to pools and spas, but also
“Almost every organization today faces the challenge of resource shortages. There doesn’t seem to be any shortage of good ideas for projects, but there is significant pressure to complete projects to get products into the marketplace as quickly as possible. As a result, most organizations find themselves working on a large number of projects concurrently and trying to manage their limited resources across all the projects in their portfolio.” This excerpt is taken from the opening paragraph of Chapter 6 titled Effective Resource Management – Debunking the Myths in the Managing Multiple Projects textbook. When going through the reading, this text caught my eye significantly. It’s very true just in its simplicity of statements, and taking each sentence in account offers great information. Every organization does face challenges with resource shortages. There are always good ideas; however, there is a lot of pressure to complete projects to get products into the marketplace. The faster you can get the products into the marketplace, the better. When this happens, especially in a diversified environment, an organization tends to spread itself very thinly across multiple areas to try to meet the demand of more products to eventually produce more profitability. There are generally three ways in which organizations deal with multiproject environments.
The first solution is to hire additional personnel to meet the resource demands of the different projects. This is the “myth” of “we can hire our way out of the problem.” I used to work for a pool company. Although this company didn’t produce anything necessarily, we still had multiple projects and were spread too thinly. Basically, we were a service company that serviced pools and spas, and sometime the general plumbing problems for commercial properties. Anders Pool Company in North Alabama is known for their great skill in solving problems related to pools and spas, but also
References: Dobson, Michael S. (1999). The Juggler’s Guide to Managing Multiple Projects. Newtown Square, Pennsylvania: Project Management Institute, Inc. Pennypacker, James S., & Dye, Lowell D. (2002). Managing Multiple Projects: Planning, Scheduling, and allocating Resources for Competitive Advantage. New York, NY: Marcel Dekker, Inc.