Resources are the most significant contributor to successful project delivery, and project managers spend substantial time planning and managing their activities. Both resource and project managers work in tandem to develop project resourcing strategies. The project manager estimates the resource requirement and creates open positions that the resource manager fulfills. Once deployed, the project manager ensures that the assigned resources perform at their maximum potential and complete the delivery.
While assigning resources to tasks, the concerned project manager is expected to look into their day-to-day involvement and provide guidance. Unforeseen circumstances can create a resource crunch that adversely affects project delivery:
What if some employees get sick, take a sabbatical, or change jobs? The project managers must ensure that the other related resources are not overloaded, disengaged, or become unproductive in their respective tasks.
To utilize project resources effectively and ensure they meet their anticipated performance goals, project managers play the role of both people manager and functional manager. Project resource management techniques address how resources must be managed while working in different project situations.
This article aims to cover the essential aspects of project resource management, including a step-by-step guide to creating an effective project resource plan. However, before delving deep, let us begin with the project resource management definition:
What is project resource management?
Project resource management involves estimating and allocating the right resource to the right opportunity and utilizing them efficiently for successful project delivery. It measures every team member’s productivity and helps you take proactive measures to maximize billable/strategic utilization.
Effective project resource planning provides a clear picture of who is doing what and how long they need to accomplish the same. It helps you visualize underutilized resources or those getting rolled off from tasks and re-allocate them to suitable project vacancies.
Efficiently managing resources in project management also enables you to answer questions like:
Do I have sufficient resources to finish a job?
Or do I need to hire someone else?
How can I reduce project resource costs and complete the delivery?
Therefore, project resource management is a continuous process, and by implementing the right solution, one can take preventive measures to meet the overall objectives.
What does a resource management plan mean?
According to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK), a resource management plan is “The component of the project management plan that guides how project resources should be categorized, allocated, managed, and released.”
A resource management plan is a roadmap or framework that helps organizations acquire, allocate, and manage resources effectively to meet the project goals. This plan is essential for managers to evaluate what type and quantity of resources are needed and when they are required in a project.
Some crucial elements to be included in a project resource planning are:
- A comprehensive list of the types and number of resources required to complete a project.
- The costs associated with managed resources.
- Does the organization have the required resources, or do they need to hire them or outsource the work?
- The processes that will be used to allocate the resources and forecast future requirements.
- Various techniques to manage resources effectively.
- Various policies and procedures related to resource hiring or workload management.
- Defining the metrics to measure the performance of resources.
Now, let’s look at the various resources used in project resource management.
Types of resources used in project management
People, processes, and technology, also referred to as the golden triangle, are essential for successful project implementation. So, to get the work done, you need labor, and they, in turn, need materials, equipment, and a place to carry out the project activities.
On an enterprise level, project resources can be human and non-human, which includes but are not limited to:
Labor
Labor or human resources comprises employees (part-time or full-time) and contingent staff with various skill sets required for delivery. Labor is essential to execute tasks necessary for the successful completion of projects. Managing them diligently ensures that the right people are in suitable roles and work efficiently to help achieve the project objectives.
Consumables & materials
Consumables and materials are essential in project management as they directly impact the cost, quality, risks, etc., and are needed to generate the final product. For example, the materials for a road construction project are soil, rock aggregates, binders like lime, bituminous materials, cement, etc. Managing these resources is crucial as they ensure the successful completion of projects within the committed time and budget while meeting the quality and regulatory requirements.
Equipment & tools
Tools and equipment play a vital role in project management as they help perform specific tasks within a project. For instance, software development projects require computers and various software to complete their tasks successfully. Tools and equipment cover all the tangible assets (machinery, plant, equipment, etc.) and intangible assets (software, process, methods, and ideas). These assets might change depending on the type and nature of the organization. Managing these resources ensures uninterrupted project execution, contributing to success.
Facilities
Facilities in project management constitute the physical infrastructure, resources, and environment necessary for project execution. It includes land, conference rooms, office space, accommodation, storage facilities, etc. Providing appropriate facilities, like meeting rooms for team meetings, discussions, presentations, etc., can help improve team members’ productivity and communication.
Finance
Money is essential to procure the resources and carry out the necessary work. Furthermore, budgeting is key in project management to plan and control the project expenses. Accurately estimating the costs will help organizations analyze if they need to proceed with a project and how effectively they can allocate their financial resources. Efficiently managing the finances will enable managers to make informed decisions, control costs, prevent budget overruns, and deliver projects within budget.
Knowing the essential types of resources required in project management, let’s understand the key characteristics of human resources.
Characteristics of human resources in project management
Resources help in delivering the tasks effectively. Team members provide extra hands and mind to complete the work. Similarly, equipment, technology, and processes amplify workforce efficiency.
However, while assigning resources to projects, one must consider the following characteristics of human resources:
Resource availability and capacity
Capacity is the total number of hours an employee is available per employer arrangement. Availability is the time the resource can spend on the project. So if a resource’s capacity is 8 hours a day and he works on another project for 3 hrs, his availability is 5 hours. Both availability and capacity play crucial roles in project resource planning and allocation.
Resource Capabilities and Skills
The workforce brings the required skills, experience, and expertise to help various projects meet the deliverables. Simultaneously, people also need a plethora of appropriate tools and technology to complete their work. Therefore, project managers must consider the resource’s skills and capabilities before scheduling tasks.
Flexibility and adaptability attributes
Since project management deals with dynamic and unpredictable situations, human resources must demonstrate qualities such as adaptability and flexibility. Therefore, managers must consider the resources capable of adapting to changing project requirements, priorities, and timelines. Moreover, they should be open to new ideas, willing to learn, and ready to handle unforeseen challenges.
Effective communication skills
Communication is critical in project management, and human resources are crucial in ensuring effective communication among team members, stakeholders, and project managers. Employees possessing strong verbal and written communication skills can convey information concisely and accurately and foster open and transparent communication channels.
Leadership qualities
Human resources demonstrating excellent leadership qualities and the ability to influence others steer the projects to success. They inspire and motivate team members, provide guidance and support, nurture a positive work culture, promote teamwork, and effectively manage conflicts. Moreover, they instill a sense of ownership and accountability among the project team.
Read More: What is Resource Management? A Comprehensive Guide for All
Now, let’s understand a resource manager’s key roles and responsibilities in managing project resources.
Why is project resource management important?
As a project manager, your primary concern is: How do I deliver a project on time and within the stipulated budget?
An effective project resource management strategy aims to meet delivery commitments and enhance client satisfaction. It also improves the team’s performance, engagement, and productivity.
Once you have the resources and the skills in place, you need to master the art of scheduling, forecasting, and planning efficiently for the project’s success. Efficient project resource management also ensures maximum billable resource utilization for profitability.
A powerful resource management solution can unleash the potential of your workforce. Here is how:
Reduces project costs
Complete visibility across the enterprise helps leverage global resources from low-cost locations. As a result, managers can substantially reduce project resource costs without compromising quality using a multidimensional resource scheduler. It also helps avoid deploying under-skilled or over-skilled resources in a project.
Read More: 5 ways to Reduce Project Management Costs
Maximizes profitable utilization
Project managers can forecast and improve billable and strategic resource utilization. They can ensure that project team members are productive and not spending too much time on administrative activities. Project management resources can periodically be mobilized from non-billable to billable or strategic tasks.
Ensures competent resource allocation
Unlike spreadsheets and homegrown tools that create silos, a resource management solution consolidates all information on a single platform. Using this information, resource managers can allocate the right resources to projects for timely and cost-effective delivery.
Read More: Resource Allocation: A Guide on How to Apply it to Project Management
Helps make informed decisions
Efficient resource management techniques help you see where your resources are and what they are doing, giving you control of the entire project resource planning process. Real-time business intelligence and reports let you measure the performance of project members. It facilitates accurate forecasting for informed decision-making and helps you to steer projects in the right direction.
Addresses resource constraints effectively
Multiple projects may often require niche-skilled or critical resources simultaneously for specific tasks that can be in a limited quantity in an organization. An efficient resource management process can help prioritize projects and allocate critical resources to high-value projects, followed by others. This way, it helps managers utilize scarce resources efficiently across an organization.
Tracks and improves resource health index
An efficient resource management process helps allocate resources to projects per their skills at the right time and cost. This ensures resources are optimally utilized. Furthermore, regularly monitoring employees’ skills will enable organizations to facilitate L&D programs and career development opportunities that help them learn new skills and stay up to date with current trends. This will enhance employee engagement, productivity, and organizational efficiency.
Futureproofs your business against uncertainties
Resource capacity planning helps you forecast pipeline project resource demands and identify excesses or shortfalls in advance. It also helps assess the requirements to determine the most sought-after skills, technologies, etc. Accordingly, suitable resourcing measures, like training, upskilling, hiring, etc., can be taken to bridge the skill gaps and equip the workforce with the latest in-demand competencies. This will help organizations create a future-ready workforce capable of undertaking multifaceted projects.
Read More: What is Resource Capacity Planning? An Ultimate Guide for Every Project Manager
Role of resource manager in project management
Resource managers play an essential role in the successful execution of projects. They work closely with project managers, department heads, and other organization leaders to improve resource-related processes. In addition, they are responsible for effectively identifying, scheduling, allocating, tracking, and optimizing resources to ensure the project goals are achieved.
Listed below are some of the critical roles and responsibilities of a resource manager:
Streamline resource planning and allocation
The significant role of a resource manager is to simplify the planning process, which includes forecasting, analyzing, allocating, and utilizing the workforce across the enterprise efficiently. To start the process, first, the project managers assess the resource requirements based on the project scope and raise the requests.
Accordingly, resource managers coordinate with project managers to understand the workforce requirements and the project objectives. Then they analyze the requests and identify competent resources whose skills align with the project demand. Moreover, resource managers must consider other attributes like availability, cost, qualification, experience, etc., while assigning resources to projects.
Forecast pipeline project demand
Resource managers must foresee the pipeline project demand and assess the available capacity to find any existing gap between them. They can take proactive measures if they identify any excess/ shortage of resources. For instance, they can train the existing resources or initiate hiring if there is a shortage.
Conversely, if there is an excess, they can bring future project work ahead, adjust timelines, redeploy extra capacity in other projects, etc. In addition, they can select from the benched resources or coordinate with HR managers to hire a contingent or permanent workforce.
Monitor and track resource utilization
Tracking and monitoring the utilization levels regularly will ensure that the resources work productively on billable and strategic projects. Furthermore, the managers must assess each resource’s workload and ensure uniform distribution to avoid over/ underutilization.
For overutilization, resource managers can bring in more employees and uniformly distribute the work. On the other hand, for underutilization, managers can assign them to some billable or strategic work. This will help prevent burnout and disengagement, increase resource productivity, and help maintain the resources’ health index.
Collaborate with teams and departments
Resource managers must constantly communicate and collaborate with team leads, supervisors, and department heads to gauge and ensure the availability of critical resources to perform the tasks efficiently. At times, the project managers may request resources as and when the client’s requirements change.
Resource managers must fulfill these requests, ensuring the projects happen on time. Moreover, they must coordinate with HR managers to streamline the hiring process or initiate suitable training and upskilling programs to bridge existing skill gaps.
Facilitate effective bench management
Resource managers must regularly track the bench size and strive to minimize it to protect the organization’s revenue. By implementing effective resource management strategies, they can foresee project ramp-downs and find suitable project vacancies to allocate resources before they hit the bench.
Furthermore, they can initiate appropriate measures to prepare the benched resources for future project requirements. Additionally, they can engage inexperienced resources with shadowing opportunities and can provide experienced ones on the bench with appropriate strategic projects to utilize them for profitable work.
Manage resource-related risks
Unexpected events, like unplanned leaves, sudden attrition, etc., can hinder the project’s progress. For instance, an employee working on a critical project has a family emergency and takes leave for some time. In such situations, resource managers must have a backup resource from the existing pool or hire a contingent employee to avoid project delays.
Hence, resource managers must anticipate these risks and formulate a mitigation plan to prevent projects from going off track. They can reshuffle resources from the internal pool or hire contingent workers (full-time or part-time) to manage these resource-related risks.
Knowing the resource manager’s responsibility in managing project resources, let’s understand the significance of project resource management in a dynamic business ecosystem.
Read More: Understanding Resource Manager Responsibilities and Skills – A Complete Guide
Now that we know, the answer to the pertinent question- what is a resource manager, let’s understand the six distinct project resource management processes.
Six project resource management processes as per PMBOK
The Project Management Book of Knowledge (PMBOK) defines Project resource management as a knowledge area that involves managing resources to deliver projects successfully. It includes six project resource management processes, namely:
Plan resource management
Before the onset of a project, it is essential to define the resource requirements. This includes identifying the type and number of resources needed to meet the deliverables. It also determines the approach you will use for project resource management. The resources have different skills and expertise levels, so their job descriptions are created in this phase. This process helps create a resource management plan, team charter, and project document updates.
Estimate activity resources
After the planning, the next step is determining the resources required to carry out various activities in a project. Moreover, other selection criteria, such as qualification, experience, and cost, are defined apart from the type and number. Some primary techniques managers can use to estimate resource requirements are Analogous, Parametric, and Three Point. Besides, evaluating resource requirements helps businesses identify resource bottlenecks and create contingency plans accordingly.
Acquire resources
After estimating the project resource demands, deciding when and how to acquire resources is essential. Managers can leverage internal measures, such as booking similar-skilled benched personnel or pre-booking the ones scheduled for release from ongoing projects. Resource managers can also track the projects reaching the closure/maintenance phase and negotiate with respective project managers to release requisite critical resources. They can also use external resourcing measures, such as hiring a permanent or contingent workforce. For non-human resources like tools and equipment, managers can create a procurement management plan to help ensure their consistent supply.
Develop team
Once you have acquired the resources, you must ensure they are skilled and trained to meet deliverables. It applies to human resources who seek career development opportunities and enrich their work experience. This process helps enhance teams’ overall performance and improves interpersonal skills of resources, productivity, etc. In addition, providing regular feedback on progress, pinpointing areas of improvement, recognizing and rewarding team members’ good work can motivate the team members to perform better.
Manage team
Project teams play a crucial role in the success of projects or organizations. The project team assignments may alter as and when the team members learn different tasks or new skills. Therefore, project managers regularly need to track and measure employee performance, and any issues in the project need to be dealt with appropriately by the team members. The process involves change requests, procurement management plan updates, project document updates, etc.
Control resources
Project scope and client requirements can change anytime during the project lifecycle. Therefore, continuous monitoring and controlling procedures ensure that you have a skilled workforce ready to take up future work. This process ensures that the right resources are assigned to suitable projects at the right time and cost and released when the project ends. Additionally, it helps managers monitor the forecast vs. actual resource utilization and take corrective measures to prevent projects from derailing.
Next, let’s understand the significant challenges in project resource management.
Challenges of resource management in projects
Managing resources can be a daunting task. Planning, allocating, monitoring, and implementing control measures for successful delivery can be highly challenging without the right tools. Furthermore, changes in project scope, client requirements, and demand can snowball and affect resource supply.
Some of the significant challenges of resource management in project management are:
Lack of visibility across the enterprise
A bird’s eye view of resources across the enterprise is a prerequisite for identifying suitable team members. Unfortunately, one of the biggest obstacles to achieving the same is that many project managers still rely on outdated legacy tools.
Wellington’s Annual State of Project Management Report 2020 report states that,
” Only 23% of organizations use resource management solutions. “
Silos of spreadsheets and homegrown solutions fail to identify competent resources within matrix organizations. These tools are susceptible to redundancies and discrepancies, leading to double booking.
The Solution: A resource management system provides a unified view of skills, qualifications, experience, cost, and other critical resource information. It saves you from the trouble of reconciling multiple spreadsheets and helps identify and allocate appropriate resources for the project. One can also leverage cost-effective global resources across matrix boundaries without compromising quality.
Incorrect estimation of team’s capacity and availability
While assigning resources, evaluating the team’s capacity and availability is crucial. When managers have a clear overview of resource availability, they can plan the projects precisely. However, aligning the team’s availability with the project schedule can be challenging without the right tools. There is a close connection between resource availability, capacity, and ability to meet the project deliverables. Let us understand how:
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Evaluate the team’s capacity and availability
Before resource allocation, it is essential to analyze if there are sufficient resources to start the project. For precise project resource planning, managers must have complete visibility of resource schedules to understand who can take up tasks. Unfortunately, many project managers still rely on spreadsheets that fail to update resource calendars in real time. As a result, project managers do not have a unified view of their leaves and time off, resulting in last-minute chaos and discrepancies. This incorrect estimation can cause delays and budget overruns, disappointing the client. So, what could have avoided such instances in the first place?
The Solution: An advanced resource management system provides enterprise visibility of employees’ schedules and their time off, such as vacation, annual leaves, or public holidays. It also provides visibility of other available resources when needed and keeps the project resource plan on track. In addition, resource capacity planning helps to identify and bridge the capacity gap using appropriate measures.
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Unforeseen events
When planning and scheduling project team members, one must consider unexpected circumstances and have a backup plan. For example, your team members can get unwell, have some personal emergency, go on maternity leave, and even abruptly leave the organization. An effective project resource management strategy allows a buffer on resources during unforeseen events.
The Solution: Instead of getting caught off guard, having a plan B when things go wrong helps. Resource capacity planning can help identify resource shortages, and accordingly, you can build an on-demand contingent workforce. These include freelancers and contractors with the required skills to execute the job. One can also look for available resources having the required skills and qualifications.
Read More: Understanding Resource Availability within Project Management
Incompetent resource allocation
Allocating suitable resources to the right projects is critical for successful project delivery. However, if organizations rely on spreadsheets and home-grown solutions to allocate resources, it creates silos of data and doesn’t provide real-time updates. This becomes challenging for managers to assess which resource is working on what tasks, thereby leading to double-bookings and resulting in sub-optimal allocation of work.
The solution: Robust resource management tools provides unmatched visibility into the enterprise-wide resource pool. With the help of advanced filters and sort-by options, resource managers can select and allocate resources based on their skills, availability, capacity, role, department, location, etc.
Additionally, managers can leverage cost-effective resources from low-cost locations. Moreover, the competency matrix enables managers to update each resource’s skills and competencies in real time with proper verification. This will help achieve competent resource allocation, minimize budget overruns, maintain deliverables quality, and improve profitability.
Unable to optimize utilization without overloading
One of the biggest challenges of project resource management is maximizing billable or strategic utilization without overloading resources on projects. Often, project managers assign more tasks to a selected few employees because they have been counted upon in the past to deliver results.
This overloading can lead to stress, burnout and build animosity among team members. Overloading also causes delays and budget overruns, and other projects also suffer due to essential resources’ unavailability.
The Solution: Project resource management software provides foresight into strategic, billable, and non-billable utilization. Project managers can use flexible heat maps to take remedial measures and mobilize resources from low-priority or non-billable work to high-priority or billable/ strategic work.
Uniformly distributing critical resources across all projects instead of assigning them to a high-priority one controls costs and improves ROI.-priority or billable/ strategic work. Uniformly distributing essential resources across all projects instead of assigning them to a high-priority one controls costs and improves ROI.
Resource limitations in a multi-project environment
In a dynamic business environment, project managers often face resource shortages. The resource supply is affected by sudden changes in project scope, client requirements, or global crises like the current COVID pandemic.
According to PwC project management insights, “30% of project failure results from lack of resources.”
It is incredibly challenging in a multi-project environment, where resource scarcity affects several projects on the boil. For example, there is a niche skill requirement to kickstart a project. Unfortunately, these resources possess highly specialized skills and are not readily available in the market.
The Solution: Project managers can use a multidimensional scheduler to identify a niche resource within the enterprise. Implementing an out-rotation and backfill strategy will help start the new project without disrupting other existing projects.
In addition, What-if analysis allows you to build and simulate various scenarios within the given constraints to arrive at the best outcome. After evaluating every project’s profitability, project managers can prioritize resource allocations.
Read More: Resource Forecasting Guide for Project Managers
Disconnect between sales and delivery team
In a project-based business, miscommunication between the sales and delivery teams can spiral down your projects, resulting in low client satisfaction. Once the sales team wins an opportunity, the delivery team takes ownership and is responsible for adhering to the commitment.
However, while achieving the sales targets, the sales team sometimes fails to involve the delivery team before signing the deal. As a result, the delivery team struggles with eleventh-hour resource allocations to meet the deliverables.
The solution: Effective resource management strategy includes forecasting and planning pipeline project requirements in advance. Once the project reaches the opportunity/approval stage, the salespeople involve the delivery team, who evaluates the resource capacity and communicates the deliverables’ feasibility. Accordingly, the sales team negotiates with the client stating the revised delivery commitments, if any, and if both parties agree, the deal is signed.
Scheduling conflicts due to lack of proper resource requisition workflow
Firms that rely on manual resource requisition fail to track resource requests effectively. Instead, resource managers work on the ‘first-come, first-served’ basis and sometimes end up allocating resources to low-value projects, leaving critical projects inadequately staffed.
Further, multiple requests via disparate channels, like emails, calls, messages, etc., causes communication silos between the resource manager and project manager. Consequently, resource managers may allocate the same resource to multiple projects for the same timeline, leading to scheduling conflicts and double bookings.
The Solution: A project resource management solution provides a centralized view of all the ongoing and pipeline projects. It helps resource managers assess and prioritize projects based on predefined criteria, including strategic alignment, ROI, billable value, etc.
Equipped with automated resource requisition workflow, the tool provides an audit trail to track resource requests and any changes made since they were raised. Accordingly, managers can allocate resources to high-priority projects to fulfill their demands first followed by others. It also allows resource managers to change request status to ‘Searching’, ‘On Hold’, ‘Proposed’, etc., to ensure transparency throughout, minimizing scheduling conflicts.
Read More: What is Resource Scheduling? How to Schedule Resources for Projects Efficiently?
Now that we understand the various challenges let’s learn about the steps to develop a robust project resource plan.
Steps to create an effective project resource plan
The journey starts with creating an efficient project resource plan for every successful project. Then, using resource management solutions, project managers can plan, organize, and manage resources effectively.
Let’s take an example for better understanding. Suppose a bridge construction project will start two months from now. Resources are critical drivers of project success, so the project manager must create an efficient project resource plan. Here are the essential steps to formulate one:
Estimate resources required for the project:
Before starting the project, it is critical to define resource requirements. The project manager identifies the type and quantity of resources. Depending on the resource type, grades or skills can also be determined. For this bridge construction project, they also need to establish cement grade, size of cranes, kind of steel, etc.
Similarly, the skills, roles, experience, etc., are predefined for human resources such as civil engineers, architects, contractors, supervisors, and construction workers. Once the resource estimation is complete, the project manager informs the concerned stakeholders and takes their concurrence. They can then raise resource requests by filling and submitting the resource requisition form on the tool. Although done initially, one must note that resources can be requested in a staggered manner, depending on the project requirement.
Request resources
Once resource estimation is completed, the project manager requests the resource manager for fulfillment. An automated resource-requesting workflow helps streamline the process.
Modern resource management tools allow project managers to specify the required skills, experience, qualifications, cost, and project timelines. This request reaches the inbox of the resource manager in charge, who starts planning for the same. The process is documented and remains auditable, eliminating any process-related confusion or conflicts.
Identify and estimate the shortfall
After receiving the resource request from the project manager, the resource manager starts planning for fulfillment. But first, they need to analyze the existing resource capacity. Next, the resource manager looks into all the resources matching the requirements across the enterprise.
Using appropriate filters such as role, competency, location, and more on the resource management tool, they can quickly find all the relevant resources and their availability. In addition, demand capacity planning helps identify and accurately estimate the excesses or shortfalls.
Read More: What is Resource Planning, and Why is it Important in Project Management?
Hire or retrain resources as needed
After identifying the excesses or shortages, the resource manager can apply appropriate treatments to bridge the capacity gap. Depending upon the project’s duration and nature, stakeholders can decide whether to hire permanent employees or a contingent workforce.
If there is an excess, adjusting project timelines, training/reskilling, or selling excess capacity helps bridge the gap. In addition, employees can be encouraged to acquire more skills. People on the bench and project vacancy reports enable resource managers to identify available employees. Learning new skills with shadowing (on-the-job training) opportunities increases billability if the resources match the minimum qualification criteria.
Publish requirements to empower resources:
Studies have shown that employees are engaged and more productive if they are fully empowered to carry out their responsibilities. Since human resources are essential assets for most organizations, involving them in choosing projects of interest boosts productivity. They are motivated and hence feel responsible for accomplishing their respective tasks.
Resource managers can publish open positions within the resource management system. Every relevant resource matching the role and belonging to the required organization structure, like the team, department, location, etc., is notified. Accordingly, they can revert to the open positions and show interest in joining the project team. The resource manager in charge can take appropriate action in selecting the ideal resource pool.
Seek approval from project/ line managers:
Once the resource manager selects the team members, they seek approval from the project manager before allocation. The project manager can either approve all recommended resources or request changing a few team members. Accordingly, the resource managers start looking for more suitable resources befitting the requirements.
The entire process repeats till both the concerned stakeholders agree on the proposal. The project manager then approves the mutually agreed resources, and the resource manager starts the allocation process. If there is a performance issue with a particular resource, the project manager can roll the person off and ask for a replacement during the project life cycle.
Allocate appropriate resources to tasks
The resource managers’ responsibility ends after the resources are accepted within a project. The project manager assigns various tasks to the selected resources at this stage. They create a complete task list and its dependencies per the work breakdown structure (WBS).
While scheduling team members, the project manager ensures that no one is under or overallocated. As a result, it improves project members’ overall productivity, reduces burnout, and helps meet the project’s objective.
Manage the project delivery
Project resource management is an ongoing process and doesn’t end after the initial resource allocation is complete. Instead, the project manager allows a buffer for potential risks affecting resource availability and completing projects with fewer members. Resource optimization techniques help project managers to complete deliverables with minimal obstruction. They are:
- Resource Leveling: This resource management technique is applied when you face sudden constraints on resources but have the flexibility to extend the project timeline. It applies when a critical resource is unavailable for a particular duration or sharing resources with other projects. Going back to our bridge construction example, suppose a vital resource, the hammerhead crane, needs repair and will be out of order for one week. In that case, resource leveling can help delay the construction activities, dependent on it by a week.
Read More: Getting Resource Leveling Right for Projects
- Resource Smoothing: This technique is used when there is a constraint on the timeline but not on resources’ availability. It means the project deadline and critical path remain unchanged. Depending on the resource capacity and availability, the project manager can add and remove resources to deliver the time-bound project. Referring to the bridge construction example, the project manager can add more construction workers to meet the delivery deadline.
Besides optimizing project resources, the project manager ensures profitability and team productivity. Project managers can use forecasting analytics, and reports inbuilt on resource management solutions to enhance profitable resource utilization. Besides optimizing resources across projects, the project manager ensures profitability and team productivity. Project managers can use forecasting analytics, and reports inbuilt on resource management solutions to enhance profitable resource utilization.n.Apart from optimizing resources across projects, the project manager also ensures profitability and team productivity. Using forecasting analytics and reports inbuilt on resource management solutions, project managers can enhance profitable resource utilization.
Conclusion
To sum up, project resource management is a skill set that every project manager must master, and with the right tools and techniques, it is easily achievable. An effective resource management solution allows efficient planning, scheduling, allocating, and managing resources across projects while maximizing profitability. In a nutshell, it helps meet your project goals using your resources intelligently.
Glossary
Read More: Glossary of Resource Workforce Planning, Scheduling and Management
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