Most opportunities for digital disruption have happened when there is wasted capacity because of a disconnect with demand. How many empty houses were there before AirBnB connected people leaving town with people who wanted to stay there? How many empty seats were there before StubHub connected buyers with sellers?
In the world of project management, optimizing demand and capacity is resource management.
If only it were that easy …
If you’ve ever been a part of a project where the necessary resources aren’t available at the project start date, that’s a problem with resource management. It’s Day 1, and your project is already off course.
This is such a common occurance because most organizations are yet to crack resource management. The process sounds simple in theory: all you have to do is track demand and capacity. In practice, it has proven to be a nightmare.
Methodologies already exist for how to collect estimates. The problem is a lack of rigor and a lack of appreciation for the ROI around tracking this seemingly basic information. It takes a lot of capacity just to do estimation on capacity. Demand then has to be updated based on the capacity, and it takes even more capacity to keep up with that. The result is a never-ending oriborus that has haunted organizations that jump into the process with unrealistic expectations from low-investments.
This has been a thorn in the paw of portfolio and project management. Solving it would be a major breakthrough.
Where AI Comes in
As with all problem-opportunities around Big Data, the data is out there. But it’s so mammoth that it will take an innovation to reliably find the needle in the haystack.
This is where AI could be a major game-changer. AI could create an avenue to constant and instantaneous updates to capacity and demand without being a drag on capacity.
Learn about how you can get help on your machine learning and AI initiatives.
