How Project Management Software Helps with Resource Planning?

Resource planning is a project management technique that assures the best utilization of an organization’s team members and resources throughout the project by implementing time management.

This ensures providing the right quality and quantity of resources to execute a project and coordinating deadlines with departments that make use of the same resources.

A resource can be people, equipment, materials, IT assets, or financing for the project.

What is the resource management challenge?

“Resource management is the most challenging part of my work. Businesses try to minimize their expenses and try to find people with specific skills. These two factors make me working with limited resources. It needs excellent planning and monitoring tactics to address these issues.

As a technical person, I understand the challenges and have a better idea about timing and what needs to be done to finalize the project. Skills that improve every time I hit on another issue as well.”

Marios Chrysovergis – Project Manager at Yospace

In reality, a decent method is merely the starting point. The next stage is to determine which and how many resources will be needed during specific periods.

A project manager must then constantly check the availability, utilization, and cost of such resources.

The challenge of resource management is: projects have stringent objectives and deadlines, but the resources available to meet those goals are limited. Project teams are expected to perform more with less in today’s environment.

Unfortunately, many businesses fail to face this capacity planning. Failure rates are especially high in the IT business, as companies frequently manage hundreds of projects at one go.

According to a study, due to short deadlines and other challenges, 80 percent of IT firms will hit “resource breaking points“.

The rate of innovation in all industries necessitates efficient resource management. Managers are more likely to fail to deliver if they do not have the necessary tools for managing resources throughout their project portfolio and spotting bottlenecks and risks early on.

A Possible Solution

The right project management software visualizes resource availability, assists you in distributing work across finite resources, and reduces project duration by maximizing resource use.

Effective software improves efficiency both during the planning phase and also during the project execution. Many project management (PM) systems like Orangescrum, particularly those developed for project and portfolio management (PPM), include built-in features for project resource planning, allocation, and management. A resource management module’s common features include:

• Visual resource management
• Planning for resource management
• Demand forecasting and proper task management
• Preplanning “What-if” simulations and real-time analytics
• Matching skills and skill repositories

Some resource planning solutions are standalone, while others are bundled with bigger PM or PPM packages. Depending on your requirements and the software you already have, one of these options could be a suitable fit.

There are multiple ways that this software can help you better allocate and manage resources at various stages of the project lifecycle. Here are three examples:

Improved time management

A project management software that includes resource management provides complete, up-to-date visibility into the division of your staff on both the macro and micro levels. Visual resource planning, for example, illustrates what your resources are working on and when they are working on it.

Most software used for management allows you to delve down to the granular level to check schedule availability. This process allows you to avoid building a bottleneck on a single resource limitation, which would surely cause the project delivery timeline to be delayed.

Decisions based on intelligence

Some of the most difficult decisions a project manager must make are how to prioritize all of the moving pieces in a project or portfolio of projects. Of course, prioritization is inextricably linked to resource allocation. Allocation errors on a broad scale can tremendously cost the organization. The best project management software removes the uncertainty from resource allocation by allowing you to plan and prioritize based on real-time data updates.

Capacity and demand planning balances the volume of work that must be completed with the real capacity of your resources (usually in hours). You can also run tests or “what-if” scenarios by entering variables and allowing the algorithm to anticipate their influence (such as a material shortage, or changing priorities). After reviewing the data, you can decide how to spend resources to achieve the best results.

Real-time resource allocation

We’ve all seen how priorities and market demands lead teams to regularly change project deadlines. You can expect your resource allocation schedule to alter almost as soon as you design it. This means that your material and equipment distribution will need to change.

Keeping up with today’s rate of change and manually implementing end-to-end adjustments is time-consuming, if not impossible.

Good software, on the other hand, automates this process for you, giving you the capacity and flexibility to fulfill ever-changing project deadlines.

With a few clicks, some sophisticated project management tools allow you to drag & drop resource assignments. If you choose a cloud-based solution, all essential stakeholders will have quick access to the revised timeline. This automated information flow is essential for efficient collaboration and ensuring that each team member understands what to work on and when.

These are just a few examples of how project management software can help you improve your resource management strategy. You can also expect more precise task costing, the flexibility to give your teams more autonomy, and a better grasp of project and resource interdependencies.

With the reality of hybrid work for many teams today, software that enables this feature has become increasingly vital.

An optimized resource schedule is the only way to achieve a well-balanced resource planning portfolio. PM software is the most effective tool in the industry for achieving this. This Project management software easily manages your projects, every aspect can be at your disposal, keep your stakeholders informed, share files and papers, and communicate with teammates from anywhere.

Did this article pique your interest in learning more about project resource management? Tell us how PM software has aided your team in better resource planning and utilization.