If you want to balance time, resource capacity, and project quality successfully, it’s important to know your limits. Managing resource constraints is a common challenge for all teams regardless of industry, and understanding how to operate within your resource scope can elevate your team’s efficiency and work quality. In this article, we’ll explain what resource constraints are, where they come from, their impact and how to overcome them.
What Are Resource Constraints?
A resource constraint is any limitation your team may face when it comes to getting a project completed. It’s an umbrella term that can be used to refer to a shortage of physical resources (like equipment or hardware), time, budget, or people. Solving the issues that arise due to resource constraints can be achieved through strategic resource allocation, which enables the efficient and optimal use of available resources.
Real-World Examples of Overcoming Resource Constraints
Let’s say you manage a team of healthcare professionals at a state health department. In addition to their regular workload, your team also needs to set up several mobile clinics to deliver immunizations in underserved communities. To meet this goal within its proposed timeline, you need a team of 30 nurses and 25 doctors. However, there are only 18 nurses on your team, resulting in a human resource constraint.
To resolve this discrepancy, you look at your budget to see if it is enough to allow you to hire more nurses. While your budget was too tight to onboard any more full-time employees, you realized you did have enough funds to pay a temporary team to fill in the workforce gaps for the duration of the project. You outsourced six additional temporary workers to help your existing employees, and as a result, were able to finish building the new facility by the deadline.
Here’s another example: You run a small-scale IT team with ambitious implementation goals. However, your budget is tight and limits your ability to expand your team infrastructure. Thinking creatively, you make the move to adopt cloud-based and open-source software to save money. In doing so, you cut technology spending costs by 30 percent while also improving your overall operational efficiency. This allowed you to allocate more funds toward your projects and speed progress toward your goals.
Types of Resource Constraints
As mentioned before, several different types of resources can be constrained. The five most common types of resource constraints are:
- Time constraints: Any limitation of resources within the timeframe needed to complete a project.
- Budget constraints: Insufficient funds needed to pay for materials, tools, or employee time.
- Workforce constraints: A lack of staff or contractors needed to complete tasks towards a project.
- Equipment or material constraints: Missing tools or supplies needed to complete a project, which can result from shortages or supply chain issues.
- Scope Constraints: Conflicts arising from changes or expansions to a project’s requirements.
Causes of Resource Constraints
Resource constraints can arise from a variety of situations. Some of these situations may be within your control to anticipate and prevent, whereas others are unpredictable and need to be navigated as they arise.
One source of resource constraints is improper project planning. If your initial resource estimates are inaccurate, you may run into shortages down the line. Additionally, if the lines of communication in a team aren’t open, the lack of transparency can lead to miscommunications about resource availability. These problem areas can be resolved with proper planning and consistent communication between all key stakeholders.
However, some forces are out of a team’s control. For example, a project’s scope may fluctuate over time, and may end up requiring more resources for reasons unforeseen. Navigating such situations requires flexibility and ample scenario forecasting so that your team is prepared for any project outcome.
Impact of Resource Constraints
If resource constraints aren’t dealt with, they can lead to several short and long term issues in a team. Unresolved resource constraints can lead to missed project deadlines and cost inefficiencies, and can also negatively impact the quality of your team’s deliverables. All of these combined can of course damage your customer satisfaction rates and overall industry profile. But beyond that, they can harm your team’s morale and negatively affect their confidence in their work.
Identifying Resource Constraints Early
Avoiding resource constraint issues requires careful planning and preparation. The first step in identifying possible constraints early is to assess project requirements and resources needed to complete them. Next, compare these requirements to your current resource arsenal and identify the gaps. Once these discrepancies have been identified, you can use data-driven forecasting strategies to predict potential resource shortfalls and plan for them.
Strategies to Overcome Resource Constraints
Resource constraints are an inevitable setback every team will encounter at some point, but they can be overcome with a few key strategies. First, make sure your team is prioritizing tasks by urgency and importance. This will help you ensure that the most crucial work is being completed with the resources you have. You can also implement resource leveling techniques to make sure that workloads and tools are being distributed evenly and optimally across your team. Additionally, leveraging predictive analytics tools will help you foresee potential future resource shortcomings and plan for them accordingly.
If you’ve followed these strategies and still struggle to complete work with your current resources, you can look into outsourcing or temporary staffing as a temporary solution. As with any aspect of project execution, cross-functional communication is crucial for overcoming resource constraints, as it allows you to share resources more effectively.
Tools and Software for Managing Resource Constraints
Resource management software tools can be immensely helpful when it comes to tackling resource constraints. A good resource management tool supports real-time resource and workforce availability tracking, forecasting, and resource allocation reporting. When considering a resource management software tool, be sure to look for helpful features like customizable reporting dashboards and whether your chosen tool supports integration with your existing project management workflows.
Prism PPM is a resource management platform that offers these capabilities and more. Our tool can support you in overcoming resource constraints by delivering centralized resource tracking, automated forecasting and real-time resource utilization analytics. An added bonus of Prism PPM is our in-platform communication tools, which support cross-team visibility and resource sharing.
Best Practices for Proactively Managing Resource Constraints
Resource constraints are a frustrating, yet unavoidable, challenge for any team. But with proper planning and forethought, you’ll know how to proceed if and when you do encounter them.
The number one way to handle resource constraints is by developing a robust resource management plan as soon as you take on a new project. Creating a plan for resource distribution at the start of any project will set you up for success in the future. In conjunction with initial planning, make sure you conduct regular resource reviews as the project progresses, and make adjustments as soon as they’re necessary. Make sure your teams are trained on how to use your available resources effectively, and keep the lines of communication open so everyone feels empowered to voice when their resources are lacking.
Some resource constraints are foreseeable, but sometimes unanticipated limitations may arise. To avoid letting sudden constraints hinder project progress, you can prepare for them by outlining multiple resource scenarios and creating contingency plans for each of them. That way, you won’t be left in the dark if your original plans go awry.
Leaving resource constraints unaddressed can hinder project progress and harm the quality of your team’s work, which is why it’s important to plan for them ahead of time. With proactive project management and strategic planning, you don’t have to let resource limitations hold you back. Prism PPM’s resource management tools can help you anticipate and overcome resource constraints so you can get back to delivering great projects and growing your team. To learn more about how our platform can support successful resource planning, book a demo today.