Anticipating and Resolving Resource Overloads

Project Success Method
Anticipating and Resolving Resource Overloads
The Concept of a Project Resource In the context of project management, a resource is any entity that contributes to the accomplishment of project activities. Most project resources perform work and include such entities as personnel, equipment and contractors. However, the concept of a resource (and the techniques of resource management presented in this paper) can also be applied to entities that do not perform work, but which must be available in order for work to be performed. Examples include materials, cash, and workspace. This paper focuses on the resource that is of greatest concern to most organizations - personnel. In a project management system, personnel resources may be identified as individuals by name or as functional groups, such as computer programmers. The Purpose of Resource Planning After a detailed schedule has been developed for a project, a nagging question remains to be answered: Will the resources required to execute the project according to schedule be available when needed? In the process of developing each project schedule, the average availability of resources should have been taken into consideration when activity durations were estimated. However, this estimating process does not guarantee that the total workload on any given resource (person or functional group) from all projects and non-project assignments will not exceed the availability of that resource during any future period. When resource overloads occur, personnel are subjected to unnecessary stress, and project activities fall behind schedule. The quality of the deliverables produced is also likely to suffer. Thus, the purpose of resource planning is to anticipate resource overloads, so that they can be resolved for the benefit of both the people and the projects. The Range of Approaches to Anticipating Resource Overloads The approach taken to the challenge of anticipating specific resource overloads in specific future periods depends upon the number of simultaneous projects undertaken by the organization and the extent to which people are shared across multiple projects. 100 GALLERIA PARKWAY, SUITE 130 ATLANTA, GA 30339 TEL (678) 801-4500 FAX (678) 801-4545 www.projectsuccess.com Copyright © 2006 by PSI. All rights reserved. Page 2 / The Project Success Method© If the organization undertakes only a very small number of projects at one time or if each person is dedicated to work on only one or two projects at a time, a "short-cut approach" may be employed. The easiest and probably most effective short-cut approach is to: ƒ Give each person a copy of the newly-developed project schedule showing only those activities in which that person will be involved, and ƒ Ask the person to check the schedule against their personal calendar and other work commitments (including the schedules for the few other projects in which they may be involved) and report any obvious conflicts. A person may realize for the first time that, during a week which is three months in the future, they are scheduled to work on five major activities in two different projects, while preparing their operating budget request for the next fiscal year and participating in a two-day training program. Clearly, "something's got to give!" The key to this approach is that each person is given the opportunity and the responsibility to identify his or her own overloads. However, if the organization shares resources (again, individuals or groups) across a significant number of simultaneous projects, short-cut approaches to the anticipation of resource overloads are inadequate. A "comprehensive approach" is required. To be effective the comprehensive approach must capture the workload associated with all projects in which the personnel are involved. Fortunately, most popular project management software systems support the comprehensive approach as described in the next section. The Comprehensive Approach to Anticipating Resource Overloads The first ... [download for more]