Oversourced

The term 'oversourced' describes a situation where a particular entity, product, or project has received an excess supply of resources, information, or materials than what is realistically needed or can be effectively utilized. This can lead to inefficiency, waste, increased costs, and potentially a decline in productivity. The term frequently applies in business and project management, but can be applied more broadly to denote excess provision of any given input. Being oversupplied can hinder effectiveness, by creating overcapacity or unmanageable complexity. This word points to poor planning, an overestimation of demand, or simply inadequate resource allocation.

Oversourced meaning with examples

• The project manager realized the team was drastically oversourced with graphic designers; they had enough manpower to complete the design phase of the project in a fraction of the time, resulting in significant budget and resource expenditure. This led to redundancies and delays in later stages.
• After the initial market research, the company became oversourced with raw materials. Production was severely curtailed due to storage capacity constraints and the increased risk of those materials becoming obsolete, requiring significant extra storage costs and leading to financial loss.
• The research team was oversourced with data, so much so that it took longer to sift through and analyze the information to identify and present key findings. The abundance of information led to difficulty, increasing the chances of errors and missing key insights.
• Due to a significant funding surge, the non-profit organization was oversourced with funds, many of which were then wasted on unnecessary overhead. The directors had trouble defining the optimal distribution plan for the budget which in turn did not increase the performance.
• The library, overwhelmed with book donations, became oversourced with novels and historical texts, far exceeding its shelving capacity. This made it harder for users to find what they wanted and led to the discarding of many books. The excess provision resulted in a cluttered atmosphere.