The concept of workshare is one that has arrived in the workforce progressively over the past two decades.  Prior to the advent of high speed internet communications, the ability of organisations to efficiently share work between their various locations was extremely low. Some organisations tried to implement workshare practices but met with extremely varying success and as such had to wait until technology caught up. Now the technology is with us, it is time to focus on effective workshare planning for project success.

While  workshare is now a relatively common practice, adopted by organisations ranging from very small alliances of companies through to multi national conglomerates, the predictability of the outcomes of their various projects is still extremely variable, some being outstanding successes, other absolute disasters. In short, the technology has caught up with the desire but the knowledge of how best to plan and run a workshare project is still lagging behind.

What Is Workshare

Before going any further, its worth considering how the term workshare is used. Workshare is the term commonly used to describe the process where a business splits the work involved in a project between a number of different physical locations. In doing so they assign tasks based on cost, availability of personnel, any specific project skill requirements and balancing the workload of the organisation. Workshare is often interchanged with virtual team but in reality, as discussed in an earlier article, the two terms are different facets of the same phenomena, the virtual team is the group of personnel undertaking the task, workshare is how the tasks are assigned and managed.

Why Workshare Planning Matters To Projects

Historically, project planning has consisted of establishing a scope, schedule and budget, considering risks and opportunities and managing stakeholders. Since the advent of workshare however, project planning has changed little, except that when multiple locations are considered, those undertaking the planning look to see how they can save costs and access skills across the locations.

The need for workshare planning however goes beyond the tactical planning processes of a typical project of previous years and must consider how the different locations will interact. It calls on the skills of more than the usual project management personnel to undertake it effectively and, indeed, requires some specific skills not often found in the offices of project delivery organisations.

Project managers need to be able to conceptualise, coordinate and lead work in multiple locations concurrently, they need to be able to inspire personnel from multiple cultures, who work in different languages and to different procedures and standards to collaborate to the common good of the project and they need to be able to deliver a project using all these different locations.

Equally, project sponsors need to be able to put aside the traditional partisan relationship created by individual offices profit and loss requirements for the common good of the organisation and the project, to make available personnel who otherwise may be lock up on local work and to share skills and information.

Workshare Planning For Project Success

When planning for workshare the project owners need to make some key initial decisions, decisions that will influence the outcome of the project month or years in the future. Among other things, they need to decide how work will be shared, who will lead the work, who will support the execution of the work, who will cover costs of inefficiencies in one office due to a different office missing a deadline and they need to decide how much money they are prepared to commit to travel and communication expenses that are beyond those of a traditional co-located project.