How should I allocate resources throughout the Project Success Pyramid?

One of the questions that came up from my original article on the 40–30–20–10 principle (also known as the Project Success Pyramid) was “given the relative importance, how do I allocate resources to each level?”.

So as promised in the most recent article, I’m going provide a guideline that will act as a benchmark for resource allocation. I will answer the other questions in later articles but for now we are going to work out how to invest time and other resources, using the PSP framework.

Myth Buster

Myth #1: The PSP is a budget ratio framework.

We are not suggestion that 40% of your allocated budget for a project is spent on the discovery. That would be daft. Instead, the framework outlines what proportion of a project’s success can be allocated to the 4 principle success factors.

Myth #2: The PSP works out the probability of success.

This is not how it works. For example, if you forwent a discovery period completely, you wouldn’t then have a 60% chance of success because you missed the 40%. You would have a much closer to 1% chance of success because the project would be predicated on guesswork. This is partially why the PSP is represented as a pyramid. The layers of the PSP are to be built upon, so a strong discovery enables proper setup which in turn enables proper alignment and communication protocol which finally enables project personnel to execute at the highest level. Think of it as the quality of each previous level determines the MAXIMUM efficacy of the next. Which takes me to number three.

Myth #3: The quality of project personnel are almost irrelevant if you get the rest right.

With project personnel only responsible for 10% of project success, you could be forgiven for thinking that once everything else is discovered, setup and aligned, that you could have anyone involved in the project. Again, this is not fair to the brilliant people that make projects happen and deliver great results. The PSP properly implemented simply creates the ideal conditions so that project personnel have everything else out of their way and focus on executing their role to the max. Having poor executors could still result in project failure. However, detail acquired during discovery, the processes put in place and the protocols being used would mean that a lot of red flags would have to be ignored for that to be the case. The PSP safeguards against a large amount of variance from one project team to another by providing clear guidelines and guard rails but it also allows excellent teams the freedom to do their best work, unencumbered by much of the blockers found in poor projects.

Resource Allocation

So what resources do I need and how should I allocate them? Let’s look at each phase separately.

Project Discovery

Time: Between 2 and 4 weeks, depending on industry, technologies and project complexity.

Team: Someone responsible for overall project vision/ownership, someone responsible for design vision, someone responsible for technical feasibility, project leader and then ad hoc SMEs.

Budget proportion: Difficult to say, and varies based on technologies, scale, industry.

Other details: However, this should be comparatively inexpensive as most can be done internally and without much expenditure. It is important that this is done thoroughly, as it sets the tone for the rest of the project.

Project Setup

Time: Up to 2 weeks

Team: Full implementation team plus project leader

Budget Proportion: Very low. Expect to spend on environments, repositories, reporting tools, design tools and management tools. Otherwise, the costs are very low and it is inexpensive to get right.

Other details: Consult with the team members to find out if they have a preference on which tools they use or are comfortable using. In the grand scheme of things, if you’re used to using Figma for design tools and they’re used to using Invision, it doesn’t make much difference (sorry Figma and Invision).

Alignment and Communication Protocols

Time: 1 week initial setup, then 5 hours per week ongoing

Team: Project leader, project owner, senior stakeholders.

Budget Proportion: ~0%. Assuming your organisation has zoom, slack, email, telephone, and/or somewhere to meet!

Other details: You should be able to set a cadence that works for the team and the larger organisation so that everyone is kept informed at the appropriate level. A good, old fashioned RACI works to monitor everything, but crucially start this during the end of discovery. Everyone critically involved should be involved before final decisions are made and should be clear on objectives, success criteria and process.

Pause

Before we look at the resource allocation for project personnel, you can see that for as little as one month, and a few hundred dollars, your project can be setup for success with 90% of the success factors executed to perfection. For multi-phase projects, you should repeat elements of this before each phase but on the whole, setting these processes in place correctly at the project inception will position your project to hit all it’s markers.

Project Personnel

Time: Ongoing (initially through recruitment, then training and communication)

Team: Project leader + the rest of the project implementation team

Budget Proportion: Up to 70%

Other details: By far the most expensive and high risk element of a project — people. As predicated earlier, the correlation between cost/resource allocation and success factors isn’t direct and without a doubt, an excellent team executing from a firm foundation will deliver many multiples better results than an average team executing from a firm foundation. However, creating the right conditions to succeed also incentivises excellent teams to want to contribute to your organisations success and so we see that all factors are linked to each other.

Conclusion

A small amount of concentrated effort in the right areas at the beginning of a project can have disproportionately large returns for impact on the project. The emphasis shouldn’t shift away from hiring brilliant people. Far from it. Brilliant people will appreciate the work done prior to implementation and will want to work on your projects. By all means spend time and resources hiring the best people but do the little things that matter first to set them up for success.