"If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail," said Benjamin Franklin. Isn't this so true even in the corporate scenario today? Research shows that just 50% of project managers are able to effectively manage risks in resource management and project budgeting. Risks are bound to be there while you manage projects because of the dynamic nature of business. But the important question is –how to keep it in control? Keeping your risks within the control limit is called risk management, which is as imperative as detailed planning. If you are still using spreadsheets for resource management, tracking costs, and timelines, then it's tough to control risks. Using resource tracking software that has features to manage your project risks is the best solution. Such a tool helps you identify, measure, analyze, and then control risks across all your projects' lifecycle.
Risks in project management could be because of unrealistic timelines, incorrect scoping, faulty resource management, resource scarcity, insufficient budgets, etc. Having a risk management strategy acts as an alternative plan and ensures the project's success. When there is no backup plan in place, it's impossible to respond to any project deviations or emergencies. A resource tracking software enables you to bake in some buffer time, effort, and cost within your project estimates. This allows for some modifications in case any risks are forewarned. This tool helps you to view all the available resources and also what are the limitations of using them. With this data, you can analyze how you can use your skilled resources on different projects and who will be the best fit.
Implementing a resource allocation tracking software that has features to manage risk as well will help you address uncertainty and the impact of any risk. But how do you assess those risks and then create a mitigation plan? Here is the process that you could follow.
Identify what are the risks or threats and where do they come from.
Then, analyze how vulnerable your resources and assets are because of the identified threats. Determine what can go wrong and the degree of impact it can cause.
Now, you need to design a strategy to reduce the risks and their impacts. For example, while creating your project estimates, always include some buffer time and cost. Also, prioritize your strategy according to the biggest risk you foresee and plan for it first.
Implement the strategy to take care of any possible risks without wasting any time. Planning and scheduling resources in an accurate manner are critical for timely project completion. So, keep the communication flow seamless, consider all risks, and create attainable estimates. Keeping all this in mind, and using our source management software, helps in mitigating the majority of resource management errors.
Lastly, it's important to monitor if the strategy you implemented is working well or not. You also need to document, evaluate, and share the progress of the risk management strategy with the key stakeholders.
A resource tracking tool can help you identify all the probable risks when you are deciding the project scope. The tool also creates project timelines, plans out everything, and does resource management. For example, a resource management solution that also has in-built risk management capabilities enables you to make feasible resource and project plans depending on your team's capacity. This ensures that the project scope is on track, and your timelines too are decided as per their source availability and their skill sets.
Imagine if you had a risk management solution that could help you assess if all your projects and associated costs are on track or not. A risk tracking tool like eResource Scheduler helps you flag any potential risks to various stakeholders. It enables you with the team's time tracking, monitoring timelines, effort, utilization, and sending real-time notifications. The right resource planning and management software also helps the project managers monitor the progress of projects and send timely alerts to various stakeholders in case there are any possible risks that could derail the project.
A resource tracking software also allows you to save and record all data related to your project artifacts. It also stores information about probable risks, a backup plan, a project plan, details about resources, etc. As all the information about all your projects and resources is available in this tool, your information is organized effectively and there is no risk of it being lost. Resource planning and management software allow you to monitor, manage, and also communicate the risk details. You can use this resource tracking tool to create an effective knowledge base that your organization can use to draft its risk management best practices or policies. This way, the organization, and its employees can follow the established process and therefore, reduce the impact on any risk.
The resource tracking software dashboard offers you real-time data, status, and business intelligence from all the projects. Such tools have dashboard widgets that help you to track all the tasks, your milestones, and a lot more. You can also analyze your resources, their productivity, your overall costs, and profitability. You can also view the progress of each project and monitor the key metrics. A project resource tracking tool enables you to create billability and Gantt charts that help in drilling down various tasks or projects and your resource availability. You can design dashboards the way you want using informative widgets. You can also configure these widgets in multiple units or date ranges to provide the total resource count, a summary view of a project, utilization, capacity, or availability.
The right resource tracking software also provides you with an insight into each resource's progress and performance. This helps you to easily track how much work has been completed as per the schedule. If you want some color coding for your trackers, the tool allows you to use red, green, and yellow color codes to track the status and timelines. You can check the total time your team is spending on completing tasks. Calculating the variance between the effort you planned versus the actual progress will help find if there is a risk of scope creep. A resource tracking software enables you to calculate your overall capacity while maintaining your payroll spending within limits. What's more? Such a tool helps you to distribute the workload to the resources in a balanced way and manage your resource scheduling and allocation optimally.
The timesheet management feature of resource tracking software enables you to track your team's time and project budgets. Wondering how? The timesheets feed data into the dashboards automatically, because of this, you can easily keep your project costs in control. This tool not only helps to track your employees' activities, resource utilization, and performance but also helps to keep your project deliveries on track. Another benefit is that the timesheets get updated in real-time, which in turn, makes the team members accountable for their actions.
To manage and keep all the risks in control effectively, you need to be careful even after your project is executed. So, what are you supposed to do after a project ends? Collect data points and learning from every project to reduce any risk exposure in the future. For every project that is completed successfully, this tool can help you derive best practices and learning insights that could be utilized for your next project plan. Some leading resource tracking tools also offer features such as reporting and document management. This helps in analyzing the overall project performance and what was the team's productivity. With the document management feature, you can record all the valuable learning in a centralized digital platform or repository that only authorized team members can access.
A Cloud-based resource scheduling software makes risk management and resource scheduling or resource allocation a unified process. You can use the tool to connect all your resources in one common place, which makes it possible to streamline information collection and resource management, even while working virtually and from different locations. Try eResource Scheduler –an award-winning, multi-user best resource scheduling software with an intuitive interface. You can configure eResource Scheduler as per your specific requirements easily. So, if you want to know about the features or benefits of this tool, book a free trial of this risk management software today.
