Managing projects and doing resource management is interlinked. In fact, project management and planning and managing resources go hand in hand. Though you cannot undermine the importance of any step in the entire project management process, if resource management is not done properly and in a planned manner, then your projects and profitability may suffer hugely. Therefore, to execute and deliver successful projects, you need to be efficient at resource management. So, how can you do that? Resources managers should ensure to follow some best practices and be skilful while managing resources on various projects. But let's first see who is a resource manager and what does this role entail.
Resource managers are people who are responsible for managing the resources of any business or organization. They don't operate at a team level but mostly at an organizational level and ensure that the right number of resources with the right skills are allocated to the various teams as needed. Though in many organizations, this responsibility gets passed on to a human resource manager, but a resource manager is responsible for all activities from hiring new talent, doing staff allocation for the workforce, and keeping a tab on the resource pool and requirements.
To become a skilful resource manager who can fulfil the assigned responsibilities well, you should possess certain skills. For example, leadership skills, interpersonal skills, and managerial skills. A successful resource manager needs to overcome all challenges that they may face and successfully plan resources on various projects. To do that, they must follow these best practices.
Every business and team have a limited capacity and take on a number of projects which they can deliver. If they accept projects which are more than their capacity, then the team members may have to work overtime, the quality of the deliverables may suffer, projects could be delayed, and budget overruns may happen. So, how can organizations ensure that they do not overcommit? Firstly, they should have a precise estimate of their capacity. To do that, they can employ the 80/20 rule. According to this rule, most people spend about 80% of work time on their projects and the rest 20% on redundant and administrative tasks like answering emails, attending meetings etc. With effective resource management, you should try to adjust this ratio so as to represent how your resources are spending their time.
Setting priorities between various tasks and projects is a tough one. However, if priorities are set correctly, your resource management will be seamless and there will be higher chances of successful completion of projects. If the priorities for various tasks and projects is set, the resource managers would know where they need to staff first. They can staff the important client projects first to minimize the risk of failure. Setting priorities also helps resolve various resource conflicts and re-scheduling projects to ensure no one is overallocated or overburdened. This way, the highest priority tasks can be taken up by your key resources, while the lower priority ones can be aligned to someone else or rescheduled.
Hiring competent resources is always tough – not only in terms of finding the right skills but then hiring and training them. That's not all. How efficiently you utilize your resources is another key factor in the long-term success of projects. So, how can you ensure that you can get more tasks and projects done with a limited number of people? Consider using resource management software. eResource Scheduler is one such top-rated tool that helps project and resource managers inefficient resource allocation, scheduling and utilization. You can profile, identify, and schedule best-fit resources methodologically on different projects and other ad-hoc work. The features of this tool have been developed after considering industry feedback. The organizations that have implemented eResource Scheduler have reported that they delivered 15% to 25% extra projects because of efficient resource scheduling.
A team member who is more competent and has better experience and qualifications is always critical to the company. When such an indispensable and important resource is assigned a task or project, then he/she cannot be aligned with any other project. As such key resources are always in great demand, the resource manager should assign them only to important and high-value projects. This way, you can avoid overbooking them and enable project managers to plan their projects such that other resources who are capable and have availability are assigned other tasks.
To forecast your resource requirements for the projects in the pipeline, you would need accurate data. A highly configurable resource management tool provides easy-to-understand and visual dashboards. That helps you to get hold of all the important data and information in a snapshot in on one screen. The tool's widgets showcase information in different units and scales as per your individual requirement. The dashboards also offer real-time understanding into various key metrics like capacity, availability, resource utilization, project status, etc. Such a tool also flags any loopholes or challenging areas that require attention. This helps to easily drill down and gain deeper insight and find appropriate solutions. A resource management tool also performs demand forecasting and hire the right talent on time and inform the resource managers of the future hiring requirements.
If you aim to minimize your project risk, then you should form a response team that includes efficient team members with specialized knowledge and who have some availability. They can be asked to step in when some unforeseen challenges arise, or some specific expertise is required on any key projects. Having a response team in place will reduce stress and the ongoing resource conflicts. When things are streamlined, this team can keep working on the tasks as per priority and keep contributing to enhancing the project quality.
Project managers always aim to optimize their resource utilization but first, it's important to measure it accurately. The right resource scheduling software uses algorithms that enable measuring, reporting, and optimizing resource utilization accurately and eventually enhance productivity and profitability. The utilization data is always updated in real-time in the tool. So, for example, if a new booking has been created, or deleted, or updated, your resource utilization reports will show the most recent updates. Besides, you can easily configure these reports with different views, units, filters, graphs, etc. while providing all critical information that the management may need to make important decisions.
Because of technological advancement, resource managers these days can use robust tools to enhance the resource management process, find and resolve any ongoing resource conflicts, and manage their resource pool better. There are many tools in the market these days. But it's important to pick the right one that helps resource managers in fulfilling their responsibilities. eResource Scheduler is an award-winning and top-rated tool that enables you to do resource scheduling of any type. Every resource type generally has a profile form to capture or save the information. The tool's highly configurable fields enable you to capture all the information according to different resource types. You can also do reporting depending on the project types. The tool also provides a detailed resource availability report that displays accurate and integrated data at various levels of the organization.
Implement eResource Scheduler – a leading resource management software that maintains a complete list of all the projects and resources in the organization in one centralized place.
This leading tool has features like resource requests, user access rights, unlimited projects and bookings, gap reporting, and a timesheet module. The resource managers can pull out various reports such as the utilization and availability reports, find the project cost, use its financial reporting, and revenue module, etc. to make their work easier. So, if you have any questions about this tool, sign up for a free trial and ease your resource management process.
