3. Resourcing and workforce
The workforce comprising skilled delivery professionals and multidisciplinary teams, is the core resource that drives outcomes and enables the achievement of public objectives. Effective resourcing goes beyond staffing and requires strategic planning that is both comprehensive and adaptable to change throughout the project lifecycle.
The SRO plays a critical role in championing integrated workforce planning, ensuring resourcing strategies are aligned with delivery phases, and fostering a culture that values capability development and retention. By embedding workforce considerations into early planning and governance, SROs can help ensure delivery teams are not only adequately staffed but also empowered to succeed.
Strategic workforce planning, clear role definitions, and proactive resourcing are essential to building delivery teams that are capable, resilient, and aligned to project needs. Projects often encounter challenges when workforce planning is reactive, fragmented, or disconnected from delivery timelines. When roles are poorly defined, recruitment is delayed, or critical skills are unavailable, delivery momentum slows which increases risks and negatively impact team morale. In complex or high-demand environments, these issues are amplified particularly when workforce decisions are made without a clear understanding of delivery priorities or interdependencies. Ensuring the right capabilities are in place, and that teams are supported to respond to evolving priorities, is critical to maintaining delivery momentum and achieving intended results.
Key lessons
Workforce planning
Large-scale and complex programs require early and deliberate workforce planning. Team composition, capability and continuity are important from the start. For example, delivering new enterprise capabilities often requires more resources and coordination across business and ICT areas.
Related actionable insights:
1 - Conduct workforce planning early, revisit often | 2 - Structure resourcing for flexibility | 3 - Align resourcing to delivery model | 4 - Plan for shared/APS resources | 5 - Secure specialist support early | 6 - Prioritise core team stability
Role Clarity
Clear roles and responsibilities across the project team supported effective delivery. This included vendors, operational staff and subject matter experts. These roles were not always well understood, although often assumed they were. Clear roles support smoother handovers, clearer ownership and better management of quality and delivery issues.
Real life learning
A large-scale and ambitious transformational program experienced ongoing tension between business areas managing high operational demands and delivery teams working to meet defined project outcomes. This created friction at the interface between business and delivery, particularly where BAU teams and program delivery capabilities were not well integrated. The experience highlighted the need for clearer roles, responsibilities and expectations of SME input, especially where operational and delivery priorities competed. Greater clarity in these areas would have supported closer alignment and stronger shared ownership of outcomes.
“Different terminology is toxic to clarity. It can lead to confusion about who is really accountable. I would say if you can adopt the standard terminology rather than something bespoke, that’s helpful.”
Practitioner perspective
Related actionable insights:
2 - Structure resourcing for flexibility | 4 - Plan for shared/APS resources | 5 - Secure specialist support early | 6 - Prioritise core team stability
Delivery expertise
Dedicated project resources are essential. They should be supported by access to specialist expertise such as ICT, legal, and subject matter experts. This helps maintain operational performance, improve collaboration and support effective delivery.
Real life learning
The project involved a complex system design and needed specialist expertise to resolve issues encountered during delivery. Technical SMEs from internal teams or external providers were embedded into the project team through secondments, giving the team direct and timely access to specialist expertise. This was important in understanding and resolving multiple issues encountered during delivery and data migration. It also supported faster collaboration and more effective problem-solving across the team, reinforcing the value of timely access to specialist expertise to resolve issues.
Related actionable insights:
2 - Structure resourcing for flexibility | 4 - Plan for shared/APS resources | 5 - Secure specialist support early | 6 - Prioritise core team stability
Team composition
Choose the team carefully, to suit skills and roles you need. Teams made up of individuals with influence across key organisational areas, together with continuity in core roles, helped build resilience and maintain delivery momentum over time.
Related actionable insights:
5 - Secure specialist support early | 6 - Prioritise core team stability | 7 - Monitor team culture
Actionable insights
Conduct workforce planning early and revisit it often.
Workforce planning should not be a one-off task in the business case. Review it regularly to make sure the right skills are available at the right time, especially in long running or complex digital transformations. Where possible, recruit specialists from a broader, location-agnostic talent pool to increase your options.“When we say ‘yes, we have a Workforce Plan’, it is often one of those documents someone did in the Business Case and never comes back to again. We also assume that often in complex projects we’ve got one team and it’s well established and ‘it’s on’ and that’s it, but it actually ebbs and flows."
Practitioner perspective- Structure program resourcing for flexibility and stability.
Build resourcing models that can adapt to changes in delivery phases, delays and scope changes. For example, increasing leadership capacity at critical stages can ensure the program has appropriate focus on complex or high-risk work. - Align resourcing to match delivery.
If you are using smaller, incremental and iterative delivery models, align resourcing and funding to suit. Build in time to scale resources up and down gradually. Predictable workforce planning helps maintain momentum and avoid burnout or underutilisation. - Plan for shared resources across the organisation, and more broadly around the APS.
If you rely on shared agency resources, make sure their work is planned and prioritised to protect their availability for critical dependencies, key deliverables and essential delivery functions. Delays from these teams can directly impact delivery timelines and reporting. - Secure and prioritise specialist support.
Subject matter expertise is critical and should be planned, funded and embedded early. Build in enough time for recruitment, security clearances and induction, which can take several months. - Prioritise core team stability and capability.
Build a core team with continuity and institutional knowledge. Stability in key roles supports team cohesion and delivery momentum. While turnover is unavoidable, avoid relying too heavily on contingent labour for critical roles such as change management and technology. - Monitor team culture.
Strong team culture and cohesion are critical to sustained performance. When programs face challenges, morale can shift quickly. Watch for early signs of disengagement and proactively address them. Celebrate releases and project successes to keep morale strong.