The High Cost of Resource Mismatching 

The investment management industry is dependent upon technology and on the practitioners in the industry who both understand the industry and have a command of those technologies. Projects around those technologies are quite complex, especially when it comes to planning and resource allocation. One of the most significant challenges is matching human resources to the hundreds of tasks in the project. A mismatch of the resources to the knowledge, skills, and experience the project needs inevitably leads to waste, re-work, and delays in the project timeline. 

Resource task mismatching occurs when team members are assigned to tasks that do not align with their skills, knowledge or experience. Here’s a real-life example:

A project member was tasked with finding a way to restrict all equity securities except those on a specific list. He created a compliance rule using the ticker as the security identifier. Just to be safe, he ensured that the violation would occur if the ticker was not on the list or if the ticker was blank.

Unfortunately, none of the fixed income securities had a ticker. The overnight compliance check went from a 45-minute job to 6.5 hours as the compliance engine attempted to write in excess of 300,000 violations. It also cost the entire project team half a day while the problem was addressed.

The impact of the mistake made it obvious that this project member had a few gaps in his understanding of the task. More often, gaps like this go unnoticed until deliverables are late or don’t match the true requirements.

This mismatch in skills can also impact the team member, leading to frustration and potential burnout.

A Skills Assessment Can Help Align Your Project Resources

To avoid resource task mismatching, it's essential to conduct a thorough skills assessment of team members and identify their strengths and weaknesses. This can be done using self-assessment surveys, peer evaluations, or skills tests.

SkillScape is our project heat map which identifies our consultants’ depth of knowledge on strategies and systems. The results from SkillScape can help identify any gaps in knowledge/system experience of your team and allow you to source other resources (internal and external) to fill those gaps or create the right just-in-time training to close the gaps. The result is that your projects are supported by team members who have the skills and experience to complete the tasks successfully.

As experienced project managers, we have led many Order Management System (OMS) conversions. We can work with you to find the resources you need to complete your projects correctly the first time and on time. Talk to us about how SkillScape can help your projects reach 100% success rate.