Project Resource Management: Planning and Optimization

Due to teams' inability to manage resources effectively, I have seen various projects collapse, despite having a good concept or sufficient funding. As a result of the clear objectives and adequate budget, I was able to consult a software development team last year. Yet, despite my efforts, I could not help them meet any of their deadlines. What was the problem? Three of the developers were spread too thin across five different projects, while the other two were left with nothing to work on. This is what happens when resource management is ineffective.

In the last decade, project resource management has become more effective due to the integration of planning, scheduling, and controlling project work to use resources effectively and efficiently. For project professionals, particularly those undertaking PMP® certification training, having a firm grasp of these concepts is essential, as it embodies the principle that governs the three project management constraints, commonly referred to as the triple constraints: scope, time, and cost.

Management of project resources is more than just giving people tasks. It is having the right resources, at the right time, and in the right ways to achieve the maximum result. Resources can be personnel, a budget, equipment, time, and even information.

The structure involves four main activities: determining needs, assigning specific tasks with resources, tracking utilization of resources, and making adjustments when issues arise. Without these elements, projects become disorganized and chaotic. Some team members become overworked while others are underworked. Budgets become out of control, and deadlines are missed.

Your planning scope will be defined by an understanding of resource classification. Here are the five main resource classifications.

Human Resources will always be the most important resource. A full-time senior developer is significantly more crucial than a part-time junior developer, even though they may hold the same title. Planning is most effective when it is based on true, rather than assumed, capacity.

In project management, financial resources determine your budgeting resources, including salaries, contractor expenses, subscriptions, equipment acquisition, and contingency funds. Financial crises can be avoided during an operational phase by budgeting prudently.

Resources, including technologies and equipment, can create bottlenecks because they are often siloed. If two teams require access to testing technologies at the same time, one will have to wait. Scheduling conflicts can be managed by effective scheduling.

Before one can start effective planning, one must first identify the relevant personnel. This means determining how many developers are required, how long, and what specializations are necessary. The estimating techniques I have mastered that always have an effective outcome are:

When planning for resources, one can use previous experiences to project what will be needed. For example, in previous similar projects, 4 developer hours were needed for each function; therefore, for future projects, that same ratio will be used. For effective project planning, previous projects must have documented outcomes.

When planning for resources, one must also consider the risks and uncertainties. For effective project planning, one must also consider the risks and uncertainties for all the outcomes expected. The project will be planned so that all the outcomes will fall within the planned time for the project.

The last technique is to break the project down into smaller parts. For effective project outcomes, each of the smaller parts must be individually estimated, and the estimated outcomes will all be summed at the end of the project.

After estimating needs, the next step is to develop a Resource Breakdown Structure (RBS), which is a project management tool to help identify a list of project resources organized by a specific criterion, classification, department, or function. This is a great way to clearly identify what is needed and to spot possible deficiencies in the relevant project.

In project management, allocation is the first step toward implementation. In allocation, the manager assigns resources to a task within the constraints of time, which seems simple but becomes quite the challenge in complicated multi-project environments, high/low conflicting/competing project priorities, and a limited resource/project time/availability.

In resource leveling, you resolve the condition of multiple-bucket [more than one task or multiple work element (WE) that are the same type - for example, a project, an activity, or a step in a task] assignments [where one resource is assigned to multiple tasks that are to be completed within a certain time frame and/or at the same time] in which the resource utilization and end result is known to be for the benefit of achieving the task. In cases where resource demand exceeds resource capacity, you must adjust implementation work based on the leveling or reallocate the implementation work to achieve a balanced resource load by task. This may require the postponement of some non-critical active tasks in order to achieve task resource rest allocation for the active tasks of the critical or primary (on the project) path.

In smoothing, the goal of resource utilization is achieved optimally within a project core's end date, which is fixed and fully described. Unlike leveling, in smoothing, you do not alter the core end date but reallocate (ideally uncompleted) work to minimize the fulfilled resources within the defined capacity to smooth the work. In essence, work smoothing allows a team to address conflicting deliverables while maintaining the project's core, including the end date.

The value bars illustrate the balanced goal of deliverables achieved at a utilization of 75%. Values of less than 70% indicate your resources are grossly underutilized, whereas levels above 85% indicate the organization's work resources are highly concentrated on a finite number of resources and that a high level of work burnout is present.

Understanding these strategies of resource optimization is a reason many project managers engage in the project management domains of comprehensive knowledge in Leveling of Resources and in Structuring the Project. The knowledge is part of the vast structured project management plan methods of project managers that comes from the comprehensive Certification Training of a Project Management Professional.

"You can't manage what you don't measure." I monitor five metrics that cover the overall well-being of company resources.

• The resource utilization rate measures the proportional amount of time that resources are engaged productively as opposed to being available for work. To find this value, take the actual working hours and divide them by the total available hours, and multiply by 100 to get a percentage.
• The planned vs actual usage compares what you predicted against what the actual outcomes were. Large discrepancies suggest estimation errors that need to be reconciled in order for that estimation to work in the future.
• Resource cost variance compares how much was budgeted for resources versus how much was actually spent. If this value is greater than 5%, immediate corrective action to adjust internal budgets is required in order to avoid budget burnout.

Key Performance Indicators in project management allow for early predictive measures of potential problems. The use of a rolling dashboard for internal resource allocation is a useful tool for observing and acting upon internal resource allocation problems as they arise.

Resource management practices I have developed over the years of managing projects are as follows:

• Based on the RACI model, determine who is responsible for what. This model states, "every task should be accountable to someone, responsible to someone, and also have people who are consulted, and people who are informed." This will create role clarity.
• Don't spend time on long-term planning. Utilize a rolling-wave planning approach. Plan what work you will be doing in the short term, as that will be the most actionable. As you start to get more information about the project, you will be able to resource forecast what the project will need more accurately. This is better than wasting time on a long-term plan that will ultimately contradict future plan updates.
• Construct resource pools with an aligned resource set. Pooling diminishes reliance on particular individuals, and when someone is away, it increases coverage.
• Establish contingency strategies for pivotal resources. Prior to an event, identify alternatives. If a primary developer is sick, you will already know who can fill that position.
• Contextualize resource demand standardization. Clear standards facilitate the proper assessment of resource requests when competing projects exist.
• Significant project ownership establishes governance models and accountability for the implementation of these methods, particularly regarding order and resource utilization.

Resource over-allocation is the distribution of work to individuals beyond their capacity. This is evidenced by missed project deadlines, reduced project and work quality, and increased frustration within the work team. Solution: implement and utilize resource management systems that facilitate the monitoring of resource distribution, the reallocation of resources, and the addition of support.

Ambiguities surrounding multiple tasks can lead to confusion and duplicated effort. Solution: Maintain a current, clear Resource Breakdown Structure and systematically distribute it to all relevant stakeholders.

Poor communication often results in conflicts regarding the distribution of resources due to the lack of collaboration within and among work teams. Solution: Utilize open and accessible centralized systems for all personnel to view the equitable distribution, current unused resources, and the workload. In addition, integrated calendars and project management systems can substantially reduce the incidence of conflicts and overlapping project tasks.

Scarcity of resources can reflect negatively on projects if critical resources are unavailable at specific times. Assuming that preventative measures can be implemented, schedules can be altered to include float times, and calendars can be created to reserve and identify the availability of resources. In addition, managers of resources or retainable resources can be incorporated into the plan at the outset of the plan.

Some of the techniques available for making informed decisions when allocating resources include the use of analyses from a quantitative vantage point, such as decision matrices to compare alternatives.

Effective resource planning creates order and control from the chaotic execution of a project. Through prosperous and prudent planning, order is created on the chaotic control of time, costs, and load, and the execution of the project is made within the long-awaited deadlines, or the throughput increases, at a suitable and commensurate measure. Also, the available resources that are not used are not wasted on the team built for creating the chaos in the project.

The strategies I have mentioned are not derived from theoretical possibilities; rather, they are strategies that have been proven and tested over many industries and types of projects. Take the resource calendars and the tracking of resource utilization as your own initial point. Then move on to methodologies of estimation and optimization. Your teams can be assured that they will have a smoother execution of the projects.