How to allocate resources to a project
Managing resources effectively is key to successful project delivery. This guide explores the common challenges of resource allocation and offers practical tips to help you plan better, avoid bottlenecks, and keep your projects on track.
Project managers spend a large portion of their day allocating resources to projects and re-allocating tasks when changes arise to ensure they can still successfully deliver their projects on time. As a result, an agile resource allocation strategy is a necessity in the ever-changing landscape of project management.
It’s not always easy to manage project resources, but it is essential for ensuring successful delivery at a professional services firm. Being methodical and implementing an effective resource allocation process early on will help you save money and boost morale among your team members.
Resource allocation planning requires a comprehensive understanding of your project's scope while accounting for availability and anticipating potential changes that will impact your ability to deliver on time and on budget. In this guide, we’ll share some common challenges in the resource allocation process and give you actionable tips to work more efficiently in the future.
Why is resource allocation integral to project management?
Resource management in project planning not only allows for the identification of potential issues due to skill or proficiency gaps but also prepares you to take preventive measures and ensure a successful outcome. Efficient resource utilization in project management leads to higher-quality work delivered on schedule, ultimately contributing towards greater success for your business.
Common challenges faced during resource allocation
Project managers know that achieving successful completion of a project is no mean feat - and a challenge often lies with accurately allocating resources. Poor allocation can lead to disastrous results, including costly delays, hefty overspends and high staff turnover rates.
From financial constraints to poor time management, there are all sorts of issues that can arise when trying to properly allocate resources to a project—big or small. Here's a look at six common roadblocks you may face along the way.
Unavailability of resources
Companies can struggle to meet the demands of their customers and operate at optimal efficiency due to a scarcity of resources. For professional services, that means hiring! It’s a balancing act to ensure you have enough people but not so many that they are sitting on the bench.
Changes to the scope of the project
As much as project managers try to avoid scope creep, there may be occasions when your project needs to adapt due to unforeseen circumstances.
A powerful antidote to scope creep is adopting an agile resource allocation strategy. The agile manifesto was first devised by a coalition of software engineers struggling to complete large-scale projects with multiple moving parts using traditional project management methodologies (see waterfall). They identified a need for a new way of working that accounted for a fast-paced environment with multiple specializations working simultaneously.
These days, it’s not only software teams that work on complex projects subject to scope change. Any project that needs to allocate resources to a project efficiently and involves multiple stages, all working at once, can benefit from an agile approach to resource allocation. By using resource management software that allows you to see availability and move resources across projects, you can maintain an agile approach to scope change and keep your project on track.
Multiple project dependencies
Businesses often struggle to accurately manage their resources when multiple projects are dependent on each other. Without proper allocation of time and materials, these interconnecting responsibilities can quickly become a bottleneck in the workflow. Multi-project resource allocation planning is a must for these scenarios.
Inefficient planning
Poor planning can spell disaster for professional service firms, leading to inadequate resource utilization and missed opportunities. Businesses need effective strategies in order to maximize their resources and achieve success within their market.
Managing staff leave with project requirements
All project firms have to balance giving staff appropriate leave and remaining on track in their absence. Having a resource management software system that allows staff to request leave on the same platform where resources are planned enables project managers to account for employee leave. Seeing in advance that a staff member has leave booked allows you to source another resource to pick up the work or adjust your project schedule accordingly.
Tips for allocating resources to a project
Resource allocation planning can seem daunting, but it doesn’t have to be. There are ways you can make the most of available resources and create a resource allocation plan that will help you successfully reach your project goals.
Here are some of the most crucial steps to prevent overallocation and ensure efficient resource allocation on any project.
Understand the scope of the project
Before any real work on the project can be done, take a moment to consider its size and complexity. Is it an extensive project or relatively straightforward? What skill sets will be key? By understanding what is expected of you before getting started, resource allocation will become much easier—enabling you to move forward with greater clarity and confidence.
Identify available resources
Can you see at a glance who is available 10 weeks from now, and how many hours per week they have available? How about which skill sets are fully booked for the next 4 months, and which are going to be on the bench tomorrow? If you can’t, then you need a system and process to make that a reality in order to enable effective resourcing and allocate resources to a project efficiently.
Identify resource capacity across multiple projects
For successful resource allocation, understanding your resource capacity is a key way to reduce unexpected resource shortages ahead of time. Before taking on a project or task, it pays to evaluate all your resources and dependencies ahead of time. This way you can avoid costly bottlenecks during implementation. Investing some extra effort upfront, not only reduces risks but also allows teams to make better use of their assets over multiple projects within your firm.
Make sure to track time
As a leader, it's essential to monitor the progress of your team and make sure that all tasks are completed efficiently. Luckily, there is now reliable technology available for you to follow up on timesheet submissions in real-time and analyze data collected and stored all in one program. This will help you stay organized when planning daily tasks and scheduling future projects, ensuring that you allocate resources to a project effectively.
Create transparency
Make it clear who has requested what resource, and if there are changes made to the resourcing plan, who made them and when. This creates accountability when sometimes Project Managers may be hoarding resources for their projects.
Enable financial projects based on resourcing
Given your current resourcing plan, will your project go over budget? How about which of your projects in your whole portfolio will go over budget if your resourcing plan is accurate? Either you need some incredible spreadsheets and an amazing process to get those in front of all relevant team members on a daily basis, or you need a resource management software platform that answers those questions in real-time.
Use available tools
It’s helpful to color-code your resourcing. Typically red shows a week, day, or month where someone has been over-resourced. Green may show availability to take on more work. It needs to be easily identifiable at a glance in order to use it day in and day out.
Follow a routine
To stay on top of project planning, you must be prepared for any issues that come your way. Adding too many people or days to the project schedule can threaten long-term objectives and reduce profit margins. You can avoid this by using a tool designed to compare utilization targets with actual results in order to ensure resources are being utilized as you intended.
Avoid over-allocating resources
Over-allocating resources to any project is a surefire way of guaranteeing poor-quality results and exhausted employees. Prevent the cycle from repeating itself by planning well, being mindful of how much work you can realistically expect each resource to complete in a day, week, or month, and utilize all available tools for efficient allocation.
Use reports
Compare the resource allocation plan to the project budgets, to the planned hours, and to the actual hours worked by person and project. The only way to improve resourcing for the future is to take a sharp eye to the past.
Resource leveling and resource allocation aren’t skills you need to naturally excel at to successfully manage a project.
In summary
To make things run smoother from start to finish, project managers can incorporate all of their resources into a designated resource management software platform, allowing everything to run smoothly and helping them efficiently allocate resources to a project.
