It’s widely reported that 20% of businesses fail within their first year. But one study suggests that resource allocation strategies can give companies a big boost and are critical for business growth and even survival.
PMOs know that resource allocation and management are crucial to both their short and long-term success. But how do you manage and distribute resources effectively for project management success? These 10 tips serve as a road map to help you achieve your goals.
1. Create Detailed Project Plans
Detailed project plans with realistic forecasts and requests make it much easier for resource managers to take your work at face value. You’ll save time and a lot of back and forth.
Your plan should include the scope and short and long-term goals. Equipped with this information, you can have a clearer picture of what resources you’ll need to tackle. Remember that your plans should extend across organizational portfolios, departments, and objectives. Resource usage, like the projects themselves, should correspond to organizational goals.
2. Take Inventory of Your Current Resources
Once you have a detailed project plan, it’s time to get to know your current landscape. Know what you have on hand. Then, you can identify gaps.
Of course, you’re operating within a budget, so you need to understand that there are some limitations. Account for the full range of resources you’ll need, such as raw materials, equipment, location/space, and people—potentially your most vital resource. Establish hierarchies, grouping resources by theme and importance level. That will keep you organized and focused.
3. Stay on Track—But Stay Flexible
Adhere to your plans wherever and whenever possible. At the same time, have a backup plan in case problems arise.
Resource flexibility, referring to an organization’s ability to reallocate resources as needs evolve, can benefit your bottom line, leading to better decision-making and learning, according to research. While staying agile and pivoting may seem risky, in fact, it’s helpful in curbing risks because you’re maintaining control in response to circumstances beyond your control. Conditions aren’t always volatile, but you should be prepared for any scenario.
4. Know Your Resources
It’s your responsibility to know what you need and how your resources are being used at any given time. Stay abreast of the activities in each area of your organization and its initiatives. By closely monitoring resource usage, you can identify gaps and bottlenecks.
For example, you’ll need to know when a key team member is on vacation so you can ensure coverage for their role in a project. Nothing should come as a surprise. If a problem arises, such as a team member’s long-term absence due to illness, you should have a contingency plan in place.
5. Prioritize Resources Effectively
Resource prioritization is essential for proper allocation. Timing plays a crucial role in your projects’ success, and you need to align your planned usage with organizational priorities and objectives to organize and delegate resources appropriately.
You will need to compare project needs and rank them in order of importance to determine their hierarchy—when and how they should be tackled. Resources should be prioritized according to this hierarchy and allocated based on discrete projects’ relative importance.
6. Use the Right Tools
A strong project portfolio management platform like Prism PPM can be your partner in managing resources and projects. You’ll get key data, including comprehensive, real-time analytics and reporting. Plus, you’ll be able to track where your resources are allocated at any given time, which helps you determine how they are being utilized and make adjustments accordingly.
A PPM tool also allows you to configure alerts and aids you in predicting resource needs and flow. You can understand where and how your resources are being used and address emerging issues.
7. Be Careful of Over-Allocation
Even the most attentive PMOs and project managers can overallocate resources. This concept is usually applied to people, which can lead to team members becoming stretched too thin. That often leads to burnout.
Overutilizing people reflects poorly on your office and the organization. Ensure you understand people’s capabilities and capacities, and make adjustments to your plan if you’re at risk of overallocation. Keep reviewing and refining your plan to account for people’s schedules, skills, and time. You may need to add more people to prevent problems from arising. Or, if your budget doesn’t allow that, your overall plan could need editing.
8. Forecast Demand and Requirements
You must be realistic about what you have, what you need, and what’s available. Forecasting is crucial for both understanding your resource requirements and proactively addressing issues that often arise.
You need to account for multiple scenarios and ensure you have or can obtain the resources you need to carry out your projects and meet your organizational goals. You also need to be realistic about what your budget can accommodate.
Accurate capacity planning is extremely important in assessing current and future resource requirements. A comprehensive platform like Prism PPM combines projected resource demand with the ability to perform “What if” scenarios, allowing you to understand how best to use your resources, assigning staff by skill, experience or title.
9. Involve Team Members and Stakeholders
Projects involve many people. Getting executive and stakeholder buy-in on project resource allocations up front will make it easier to schedule and start projects. Equally important are the actual people doing the work, and they must understand their roles in discrete projects as well as the bigger picture strategy.
That’s why it’s important to involve team members and stakeholders in relevant discussions and planning involving resource allocation. You can’t always make everyone happy, but you should understand what materials, equipment, time, and people they need.
10. Track Progress and Adjust
You’re likely to be grappling with many different projects and initiatives and may not be instantly aware of how every resource is being used, or even which ones are needed at a given time.
A PPM tool will help you track progress and provide data-driven insights about your resources and how they are contributing to your projects. With the ability to baseline your project plan, you can track and report on over or under-utilization or allocation, and adjust your plans proactively. Discovering bottlenecks or inefficiencies ahead of when they become a problem is the best strategy for keeping projects on track and driving greater project benefit realization.
Tip: You can understand what the core metrics are that you should track, and how to create momentum with them, by reading our white paper “From Reports to Results: Turning PMO Metrics Into Action.”
Conclusion: Doing More with Less
You’re under a lot of pressure. You’re being tasked with doing more with less. By mastering resource allocation practices, you will ensure that you’re able to accomplish your goals with the resources that are available to you.
Prism PPM allows you to effectively allocate, track, and manage resources for stronger portfolio management. You’ll not only get visibility into how your resources are being used but also understand how to utilize them more efficiently and effectively. Book a 30-minute consult or a 60-minute demo today to learn more.