Why, you might ask, would I be filing this entry under Project Management. After all, it's about the new "warming button" to be found on Starbucks' cash registers.
To give a little background, I went into my corner Starbucks this morning (200 ft from my front door) and ordered a chocolate croissant. Becka, the manager, looked over the cashier's shoulder and said "hit the warming button" and then asked me if I would like my pastry warmed up. Of course, says I, since Starbucks pastries are rarely memorable.
In it goes to the oven and out it comes piping hot one minute later. Great idea.
But again, why is this in a discussion of project management? Because it's all about utilization! One of the key aspects in managing a team, after one has all the processes in place and has it running smoothly, is to manage utilization.
In an enterprise where one is tracking "real" dollars - as opposed to corporate dollars which are pretty far from real - utilization is absolutely key to profitability. Or shall I say increasing profitability.
This was one of my key tasks for the coming year. How do I track what percentage of time my staff is utilized on billable tasks and how do I improve that figure.
I've brought this practice into a couple of agencies I've worked with in the past. To my knowledge it's much more common in private consultancies and engineering firms than it is in advertising or marketing agencies.
To get to this point, one needs a number of things:
It is key to communicate to staff that if they are under-utilized, it is management's responsibility to fix the issue and that blame will not fall on them should they not be fully utilized.
Once you have a baseline of how busy you're keeping your staff, you can set reasonable targets and gradually inch them up as the year progresses. I don't have any hard or fast rules but I would be very surprised if my team averaged less than 85% utilized right now. Of course, as one moves up the management ladder, it's harder and harder to get billable time. That is offset by charging out at higher rates - in a perfect world.
Posted by artandscience at February 15, 2007 05:46 AM