People as resources

Posted Apr 10, 2010 20:19 UTC (Sat) by giraffedata (guest, #1954)
In reply to: People as resources by neilbrown
Parent article: On projects and their goals

Resources are things you own or have some control over. People's time is not a resource until they give it to you (by doing work) or offer it to you. Until then it is only potential.

To the extent that a project leader can expect some people to offer their time, the leader has control: he can accept or refuse the time. Of course, there's a debate to be had over whether he can expect the offer, which means whether that time is a resource.

I think that in your conversations you should make a clear distinction between resources, which can be wasted, and potentials, which at worst may not be realised. I think they are very different things.

In planning conversations, I don't see how they're different at all. If I'm trying to decide whether to use C or Ruby in a project, I might determine that I can generate more code with C because more volunteers will be willing to work in C and therefore I have more coding resources available to me on the C path. It doesn't make any difference whether I'm entitled to any of those C coders' time. If I go the Ruby route, I'm wasting the C resource as much as if I spend the project's bank account on a party instead of an FTP server for the project.

The reason to use the word "resource" for volunteer potential and bank account alike is that they're fungible. Someone might point out that if I work in Ruby, Google will throw in $5000. I certainly don't want to conclude that I have more resources available on the Ruby path because I'm not calling the volunteer time a resource. I have to do some careful analysis to see which path gives me more total resources.

People as resources

Posted Apr 11, 2010 8:19 UTC (Sun) by neilbrown (subscriber, #359) [Link]

I pretty much agree with most of what you write, but I still think there is a distinction worth making. Maybe I should have focussed more on the word "waste" than the word "resource". It is where you start talking about "waste" that we part company.

Try this: ask yourself the hypothetical question "Resources are being wasted, what can I do about it?". Think about your emotional response, and the style of practical responses that occur to you.

Then repeat with a different question "Potential is going unrealised, that can I do about that?".

To me, and I don't think I'm completely atypical, the former leads to thoughts of stopping something, while the latter leads to more productive thoughts of starting something. The former can lead to being annoyed (for the OP at least - Hi Lars!). The latter would lead to feelings of being supportive and encouraging.

I would describe your hypothetical choice between C and Ruby as a question of deciding how best to realise (or "tap") a potential.

Try this last hypothetical: "The talent and experience of the SVN developers is a potential that is not being fully realised. How can I best help realise more of what I see as their potential?".

Assuming someone agrees with the premise (I have no opinion on it), I'm sure they could think of lots of ways forward. Of course it would be more work then posting on a third party web forum :-)