Resource management is key to the success of any project. But between assessing capacity, prioritizing the most important projects and developing accurate estimates, resource management is anything but simple. And the more cogs in the machine – the more personnel, equipment, capital and other variables involved in a project – the greater the challenge.
With the right tools and plan, however, your organization can overcome these challenges and apply resource management to bring more projects home.
Resource management is the process of allocating resources to complete projects efficiently and effectively. Successful resource management involves planning, scheduling, forecasting and more. Resource management is a necessary part of every project that involves some type of resource, be it funds, tools or team members. It's a practice that nearly any sector, industry or organization can apply.
Effective resource management requires a deep understanding of your team's skills, employees' capacity and the availability of the other resources they'll need to get the job done. To align these resources with the project's needs over its entire lifecycle, you need a disciplined approach together with a wide-ranging project management skill set. And, of course, flexible resource management software that provides visibility into resource capacity, demand and availability makes the process easier.
The benefits of resource management
The Project Management Institute has studied the primary causes of project failure across thousands of professionals and executives. Its Pulse of the Profession research found that 23% of projects cite poor resource allocation as a primary cause of failure, a problem that proper resource management would have addressed.
Good resource management impacts your organizations in several important ways:
Improved efficiency. Workers standing idle due to a lack of what they need to get the job done or an uneven distribution of work between team members are just a couple ways that poor resource management can erode efficiency.
Smarter people management. Resource management provides your organization with a firm grasp on the availability of employees and their skill sets, so you can identify gaps and deploy all team members across all projects in your portfolio.
Reduced burnout. When teams have what they need to get the job done when they need it – and you distribute work reasonably among team members – you also boost employee wellness. Keep burnout low; it's one of the best ways to retain the talent your company needs to succeed.
Better project outcomes. Effective resource management drives project value, so more projects come in on-time and on-budget, and clients and customers stay happy. With fewer fire drills needed to quickly obtain the required resources, sustainable, reliable project success becomes a reality.
The challenges of resource management
Of course, if resource management were always simple, every organization would take advantage of these benefits. These are just a few of the resource management challenges your organization should take into account:
Managing capacity. It's rarely straightforward to align your organization's staff levels with project demands, especially in industries that lack easily measurable output. Draw on historical data and input from relevant stakeholders to ensure organizational capacity is sufficient to meet project requirements. This also provides sufficient lead time to perform additional hiring or plan for subcontracting.
Prioritizing projects. Not all projects are created equal, and resources are always limited, so a key part of resource management is determining which projects take priority. With a solid understanding of project requirements and business goals, your organization can ensure the most important endeavors always get the resources they need.
Aligning schedules. Project success requires that the right team members are available to work on the right tasks at the right time, but this often isn't the case. From juggling multiple projects to previously scheduled PTO, there are plenty of variables to track as you align employees' schedules with project needs.
Developing accurate estimates. An accurate read on resource needs is at the heart of resource management – if you don't accurately plan for labor and other resource requirements in advance, missed deadlines and unexpected scrambles are sure to result, along with higher costs. Accurate estimates require access to quality data regarding all facets of the project and your organization, together with the tools to put that data to work.
Types of resources
Some resource types are obvious, while others are less so. These are a few types of resources relevant to most projects.
Funds
The finances available to pay for your project might be the most important type of resource to manage. After all, cost overruns can cause delays or changes in scope like little else. An accurate estimate of the funds a project needs is a core part of resource management, as is establishing a contingency fund as part of the budget planning process.
Personnel
Your organization's employees are more than interchangeable resources – they're the engine that drives business wins and makes your company what it is, each with unique talents and needs. But for purposes of resource management, they're a key factor in determining what projects your company can take on, how quickly it can complete these projects and whether they'll be successful. To make the most of your team's time, ensure they know what to do at all times, their roles align with their skills and they have all the other resources they need.
Equipment
Equipment includes everything from hardhats on a construction site to the trucks that move materials at a mine. Resource management requires you to anticipate all equipment necessary for a project, ensure its availability and plan for what to do if it breaks down.
Resource management techniques
Despite these challenges, every organization can practice resource management well. Focus on these core techniques to make resource management a strength of your company.
Resource forecasting
Resource forecasting involves assessing a project's resource requirements, together with resource demand across the portfolio and organization, in advance. It requires an understanding of current capacity and how your organization will deploy resources over time, as well as accurate expectations for the arrival of new resources going forward.
Modern resource management tools can project future resource demands, identify conflicts between projects and apply predictions to project plans. With accurate resource forecasting, your organization can quickly identify potential bottlenecks, conflicts and gaps, then act to address them before they have a chance to impact important projects.
Resource allocation and utilization
Resource allocation refers to the assignment and allotment of resources to various projects. It involves planning how to deploy resources – of every sort, from employees with the right skills to mobile devices loaded with necessary apps – to get tasks done well and on time. If your organization doesn't allocate enough of the right resources, it will fail to stay within budget and meet deadlines, which harms client relationships and its reputation.
Beyond the impact on project success, poor resource allocation affects employee engagement and wellness. If you allocate an insufficient number of team members to a project, you overwork employees. Frustration results when employees lack other resources. In either case, they're unlikely to stay with your organization for long or feel motivation to perform at their best while they do.
Once a project begins, resource allocation gives way to resource utilization – measuring and readjusting allocation in real time to meet a project's evolving needs. As an organization's most important resource, employees are the primary focus of resource utilization. Your organization should aim to tap each employee's full capacity without exceeding it. This maximizes productivity while preventing burnout. Resource utilization also involves considering billable versus non-billable time in some industries, which adds another piece to the resource management puzzle.
Resource under-utilization is also a risk to your company. When resources sit idle, productivity drops and your company absorbs losses it cannot recoup. You must pay team members regardless of whether they're working or waiting for another crew to finish their dependent tasks.
Resource leveling and smoothing
While resource allocation and utilization are about completing tasks successfully and efficiently, resource leveling and smoothing focus on sustainable success. The goal of resource leveling is to avoid cycles of boom and bust by spreading work evenly among team members and taking into account each project on a team member's plate.
There are many ways to put resource leveling into practice. Collect feedback from team members in real time and track relevant metrics so you know how to reallocate work among team members as projects progress. Keep track of each employee's skills and interests, then plug in team members as needed across departments if their talents enable this type of cross-functional flexibility.
When it comes to time management, proper resource leveling can lengthen the estimated time to complete a project – but that's because it's realistic and ensures all the work the project requires falls within the limits of available resources. In contrast, resource smoothing does not affect the time to complete a project or its critical path. Instead, it draws on other resources to avoid pushing against time limits, and it is thus most appropriate when time is the primary constraint a project faces.
Tools for resource management
These techniques take time and effort to master, but your organization doesn't have to wrestle with resource management on its own. Look for a centralized platform that enables enterprise-wide resource management and includes these must-have features.
Integrated resource management
The best resource management platforms integrate with other important project portfolio management and project management areas like risk management, cost control and portfolio planning. This allows you to assess your organization's entire project landscape in a single tool to balance resource supply against project demand. Your platform should also let you incorporate data from other systems relevant to resource planning. You can then analyze the data to ensure resource management aligns with your organization's business goals.
Robust resource planning
Resource planning requires a holistic approach, and your platform should reflect this reality. Ensure it includes the capability to manage all types of resources – human, financial and otherwise – and to plan the allocation of these resources over any timeframe. It should also allow you to develop plans that account for capacity, capability and availability. Together with automated capacity checks, contingency planning features and detailed demand plans, these features make it simple to build a strong foundation for resource management.
Accurate forecasting
Your resource plans are only as good as the forecasts behind them. Resource management solutions take the guesswork out of estimating future resource needs with innovative forecasting methods that draw on data from across your organization. With accurate analyses up front, your organization can avoid under- or over-utilizing resources and procure the precise resources you need when you need them.
Resource breakdown structures
A resource breakdown structure (RBS) is a hierarchical model of resources like departments, personnel, tools and more. They're a great aid for resource visualization and planning. Resource management platforms save you the trouble of manually creating and updating resource breakdown structures and allow you to change the attributes they include on the fly.
Access the benefits of resource management
Effective resource management is the only way to ensure the delivery of high-quality work that's on time and on budget. Of course, organizations have varying degrees of maturity, and resource management mastery is a journey. But no matter where your company stands now, it can begin that journey with a tool backed by experts who understand how to go from where you are to where you want to be.
With Octave Sequence Enterprise (formerly EcoSys), your organization can sharpen its resource management. Sequence Enterprise is a holistic enterprise project performance (EPP) platform that equips you to build and manage detailed resource plans informed by the latest data. Its integration architecture links your resource management processes with other process areas and key external systems, like HR and scheduling tools, so it's easy to stay strategically aligned.
Contact us to explore the ways Sequence Enterprise can transform resource management at your company today.