DBASC INSIGHTS — RESOURCES AND DELIVERY
Can your organisation deliver what its procedures require?
Every check, approval and reporting requirement creates work. Before expecting people to follow a procedure, management needs to establish whether they have the capacity and means to deliver it.
By David Bowman — Founder of DBasc and co-founder of Zebsoft
A requirement can be clearly written and well understood while remaining unachievable in practice. The person may lack time, access to information, suitable equipment or authority to make the decision the process requires.
This is why Define, within my DCA approach, includes a deliberate question about feasibility: can the organisation deliver what it is asking for with the resources available? Where it cannot, the gap needs a management decision.
Approval of a procedure is a commitment to the work it creates.
Consider a requirement for a supervisor to review every completed job before release. That commitment includes time to examine the evidence, resolve discrepancies and record the decision. It also depends on the supervisor being available when release is needed.
Approving the wording without examining those demands leaves the delivery problem with the person assigned to the task. A practical review should establish how the requirement fits alongside their other responsibilities.
Ask before approving.
Who will perform the activity?
How much work does it create, and when?
What must be available before it can start?
What happens during absence or peak demand?
1. Translate the requirement into actual workload.
Identify how often the activity occurs, how long it takes and what preparation or follow-up it creates. Use observations from representative work where possible, including cases that require clarification or correction.
Compare that demand with the time genuinely available. A person employed for a full working week will already have other duties, meetings, interruptions and periods of absence. The relevant capacity is the time that can realistically be allocated to the activity.
Examine when the work arrives as well as its total volume. A manageable weekly total can still create a daily bottleneck if most requests arrive together and require an immediate decision.
2. Check competence and authorised cover.
Having enough people available does not establish that the required skills are available. Identify the knowledge, experience and authorisation needed for the task, particularly where the work involves judgement or approval.
Test the arrangement across shifts, holidays and absence. If one individual is essential to routine delivery, establish how the work will be managed when that person is unavailable.
Where training is needed, allow for the time required to develop and demonstrate competence. Naming someone as a deputy should follow a clear understanding of what they can undertake and which decisions remain outside their authority.
3. Examine the dependencies around the task.
A capable person with available time can still be unable to proceed. The work may depend on approved information, access permissions, equipment, materials or input from another department.
Identify what must be ready before the activity starts and who is responsible for providing it. Check whether shared resources are available at the required time and whether information arrives in a usable form.
Make missing inputs visible. Repeated chasing and informal favours can conceal a dependency that has never been properly assigned or planned.
4. Test the procedure under realistic pressure.
Walk through a busy period, an urgent request or an absent approver. Ask the people involved how they would deliver the requirement and where they would need a decision or additional support.
Listen for answers such as “we would catch up later” or “someone would usually help”. Establish whether those responses describe an agreed arrangement or depend on people absorbing additional work without visibility.
Agree how pressure will be recognised and managed. Define who can reprioritise work, arrange support or escalate a commitment that can no longer be met.
ILLUSTRATIVE CAPACITY CHECK
A ten-minute requirement can create a five-hour commitment.
Imagine that 30 job packs require review each day. If each review takes ten minutes, the basic review workload is 300 minutes: five hours. That calculation excludes time spent resolving missing information or dealing with exceptions.
Compare demand with available time.
If the assigned manager has two hours available for these reviews, the arrangement has a three-hour daily shortfall before additional investigation is considered.
A reminder to complete reviews on time does not resolve that mismatch. Management needs to examine how the work will be resourced or redesigned.
Investigate the options.
Options could include trained review cover, removal of duplicated administration, better information at submission or a revised work schedule. Any change must preserve the requirements the review is intended to satisfy.
Test the revised arrangement with representative work and check both the time required and the quality of the decisions made.
These figures are illustrative assumptions, not a benchmark or reported client result.
What should management do when the requirement is unachievable?
Make the gap explicit and identify the decision needed. Consider increasing capacity, removing avoidable work, improving inputs or changing the sequence. Where a commitment can be revised, agree that change with the people affected before relying on it.
Check why the requirement exists before altering it. Some requirements reflect obligations or acceptance conditions that the organisation cannot change on its own. In those cases, the response needs to address how delivery will be achieved and what work can proceed while the gap remains.
Record the decision, its owner and any temporary arrangements. Give unresolved gaps a review date and an escalation route so they remain visible to management.
Treat workarounds as information about the process.
When people repeatedly create their own method, investigate what the formal process makes difficult. A workaround may reveal a missing decision route, unnecessary duplication or a resource that is unavailable when needed.
Examine the consequences before deciding whether the alternative is acceptable. Some changes may improve the process; others may bypass an essential check or transfer a problem to another team.
Bring useful learning into the controlled arrangement. Update responsibilities and instructions, explain the change and check that the revised approach achieves the intended outcome.
APPLY DEFINE, COMMUNICATE, ASSURE
Make feasibility part of the requirement.
Define
Establish what must be achieved and what delivery requires. Check workload, competence, authority, information and equipment. Resolve resource gaps before treating the arrangement as ready for use.
Communicate
Explain the agreed method, priorities and available support. Ensure people understand how to raise a capacity problem and who can decide what happens when requirements conflict.
Assure
Review delivery against the assumptions made. Examine queues, delays, exceptions and workarounds. Reassess capacity when demand, staffing or the nature of the work changes.
Test one requirement before adding another.
Choose an activity that regularly becomes overdue or depends on someone staying late. Observe a representative set of tasks and establish their volume, timing and resource needs with the people doing the work.
Compare that demand with available capacity, including other commitments and necessary cover. Agree a practical change, name its owner and review whether the revised arrangement delivers the required result within realistic working conditions.
Use what you learn when approving future procedures. Each new requirement should have a credible answer to the question: how will this be delivered?