Things Did’nt Know About Resource Management Made Easy

Resource Management isn’t as simple as it sounds. Swimming in the sea of projects without proper distribution of resources will most probably drown your projects in no time.

Giving justice to your project efforts largely depends on how well your resources are scheduled and allocated for a gamut of tasks.

Ever wondered what Resource Management revolves around?

“Generating productivity by allocating efficient resources for the right project at the right time is the key essence of Resource Management.”

It seems a daunting task to find the “best-fit” resources but there are organizations that have achieved more output by smartly managing resources.

It includes the process of pre-planning, scheduling, and allocating the organization’s resources to maximize efficiency.

When it comes to managing and assigning your organization’s resources, Resource Management plays a vital role in terms of budgets, capacity, and team members.

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Statistical view on Resource Utilization

According to a report by Workplace Insight, 83% of employees cite feeling burnt out due to a high volume of emails. To make it even worse, 20% of employees report an “unmanageable” workload as the major reason for feeling burnout.

With the Covid-19 pandemic rising, yet again, there is a high potential for miscommunication, especially when it comes to the remote workforce. Keeping this in mind, the State of Remote report 2020 curated statistical data on how Project professionals utilize resources such as remote employees, considering their challenges.

The below exhibit from the State of Remote report 2020 indicated resource collaboration and communication as being the major cause of remote working difficulties. It’s no surprise that it also symbolizes poor Resource Management and how essential it is to give employees the topmost importance.

(source: buffer.com)

Now that we’ve learned that working remotely isn’t as easy as it seems, some of the below statistics can help us estimate the future productivity among project management teams and resource utilization.

Essential Statistics interrelated to effective Resource Management

There are some pressing factors that keep you abreast of project resource management’s best practices. Let’s take a look at the below statistics reported by notable research experts!

• 49% of employees cannot adhere to deadlines (PMI’s pulse survey, 2017).
• 26% of organizations use resource management for successful resource allocation (PMI’s pulse survey, 2017).
• Project Management professionals that believed in poor resource management as a project management problem, significantly increased by 60% in 2019 (Wellingtone, 2020).
• 25% of businesses sometimes never create project documents (Wellingtone, 2020).
• 88% of remote workers face continuous miscommunications issues with other team members (Institute of Leadership & Management).
• 54% of organizations have no access to real-time project KPIs (Wellingtone, 2020).

Important factors to consider in Resource Management

Without proper resource management, dealing with missed deadlines, overworked team members, and frustrated stakeholders becomes a hassle.

For successful Resource Management, the following aspects need attention:

Priorities: Prioritizing resources according to the importance of a task aids in avoiding unforeseen hiccups of resources.

Granular Insights:  Focuses on granular insights into what your team is working on and the time frame required to accomplish a task.

Tracking Updates: Making the most of status updates helps in tracking the output throughout the project life cycle.

Let’s run through a list of Resource Management that may have gone unnoticed –

Although there are beneficial factors upping your Resource Management efforts, some of the unforeseen challenges could prevent you from hitting goals such as:

1. Insufficiency of skilled resources

Inappropriate skilled resources can take a toll on productivity in terms of quality and quantity. You could be wasting time if appropriate skill sets aren’t being considered during the resource allocation process.

Challenging tasks require an adequate amount of skilled resources and this cannot go unnoticed.

2. Unaccessed Resource Risks

Unforeseen events, technology, and processes significantly affect the seamless workflow of a project. Risks involved with resources could include shortage, inadequate skills, increased budget requirements, jumbling up of resources, and many to list down.

Project managers and resource managers should brainstorm possible risks and opportunities that come along with the allocation.

3. Unrealistic Scheduling

Maintaining deadlines that are attainable takes thorough planning. Scheduling prime tasks to overloaded resources could only create chaos and conflicts.

A Resource Manager’s responsibility also includes overseeing if resources are sincerely adhering to the schedule. However, unrealistic schedules can complicate a simple process.

4. Resources are under-optimized

Sometimes already allocated resources are not optimized because of working on low-priority projects instead of those that meet organizational goals. Potential problems with heavy and light workloads should be assessed on a timely basis.

5. Not analyzing incoming demands

Inconsistent allocation of resources without analyzing priorities and incoming demands causes friction among team members. Viewing incoming demands (Including ad hoc work) in a holistic way can eliminate the challenge of available resource capacity.

This also means, there could be a possibility of too many unplanned requests for resources popping up. Handling on-demand requests are the first steps to resource planning in project management.

6. Poorly documented resource utilization

According to a 2020’s Wellingtone report, nearly 35% of project managers formulate resource plans using MS Excel.

A host of organizations resort to lengthy spreadsheets for documenting resource utilization and allocation. These documentations often contain errors and discrepancies that could ruin a smooth-flowing project.

A user-friendly project management software that includes flexibility, visibility, and accuracy along with handling multiple resources and scheduling formats. This truly reflects the nuances taking place on each project.

7. Inadequate Transition process

Issues during transitioning often take place during cross-functional coordination. When a project requires shared resources from different departments working on a common project, hopping from project to project becomes a challenge during the transition process between projects.

Fixing the Challenges of Resource Management

Now that we’ve recognized and nailed surprising challenges of Project Resource Management, it’s time to dive deeper into some of the essential components that drive the success of Resource Management—

Resource Planning

Resource Planning is the phase when you identify the required resources for the project. This stage focuses on laying the foundation, however, task assignment to any team members or allocating budget won’t be a part of this process.

It also includes prioritizing resources and tasks that essentially help in avoiding blown budgets put at risk, miscommunication, and a lot of confusion across tasks and teams.

Resource Allocation

Resource Allocation aims at making the most of your available resources. Project managers often use resource allocation reports. This report records a streamlined view of team members to a detailed rundown of resource availability.

While resource allocation is based on team members’ skills and capacity, it also prevents avoiding schedule delays and going over budget.  Exceptional reporting capabilities at your disposal ensure better transparency and efficiency over your projects.

Another technique to allocate resources is leveling underused or inefficiently used resources to your advantage. This is based on the multiple talents of a single employee who could take up smaller pending tasks.

All in all, resource allocation is the process of tackling projects in a smarter way, in the most efficient manner possible.

Resource Scheduling & Forecasting

Scheduling is one of the main ingredients that go into the recipe of Resource Management for productivity aka checking needs against availability. Having a resource management plan is critical for optimizing people and budget efficiency.

Resource forecasting allows you to predict your future resource requirements before a project begins. During the project planning stages, opting for a cost-effective Resource Management software will help in forecasting a project’s constraints, scope, potential risks, and unforeseen costs.

To ascertain an accurate forecast, Project Managers need to be well-versed with the project objectives and lifecycle with an interface that sports a bird-eye view of available resources within the organization.

This factor also rings a bell about utilizing Resource Management tools for remote teams that offer complete visibility with easy access to projects and resources, all in one place.

Orangescrum provides real-time reporting capabilities that offer ease in tracking resource allocations which give an accurate picture of resource availability and utilization.

Final Thoughts

No single Manager can be expected to keep a tab on multiple projects at the same time. Priorities change rapidly in organizational projects, and managers need the ability to respond quickly to new resource demands. Such priorities highly demand multiple resource management solutions for the smooth hustle of projects.

If you’d like to learn more about how an integrated resource allocation management system can benefit your organization, head on to explore Orangescrum’s Project Management Software today!

What are your favorite Resource Management Tools you vouch for?