Project Resource Management - Top 10 Best Practices to Master it

As Cornelius Fichtner says, “The “P” in PM is as much about People Management as it is about Project Management.” What is one of the biggest factor for a project to succeed? It’s how effectively the people or resources are managed. In a big organization, multiple projects run parallelly. Most of the team is overloaded with work and is aligned to multiple projects and tasks. This gives them very little breathing space. Imagine if the company bags new deals with demanding timelines and schedules. Then the resources won’t be able to manage at all. This can result in delays in project deliveries, poor productivity, missed opportunities, poor quality of projects, and low team morale. So, how can you improve project resource management? 

One of the main problem here is that companies don’t identify that high resource utilization leads to poor resource management. The solution is to ensure that your team is working on projects aligned to strategic corporate goals. The projects should be assigned only if a resource has enough bandwidth and matching skillsets. So, let’s see the top 10 best practices that project managers should keep handy to improve their project resource management:

1. Identify the resources who are in short supply and concentrate on them

Have you heard of the 80/20 rule? It states that 80% of the effects or resource limitations arise from 20% of the resources. So, basically these 20% resources are the team members who are in high demand for various projects. So, concentrate on those 20% people. Plan their projects and availability in such a way that all chokepoints and timeline delays are taken care of.

2. Approve of a unanimous approach to prioritize the tasks among shared resources

The project managers should design an efficient evaluation process that aids in decision-making. They need to evaluate and monitor the unplanned work that could overcrowd your capacity, overburden people, and cause delays in your deliveries. Remember, when you overburden your resources, quality issues can crop up in the final product and the overall throughput can go down drastically. 

3.  Thorough planning of the work to be done

When you’re planning the project scope and tasks, put a start and end date to all the tasks along with the complete duration. This will define the work properly and help you determine your top priority. You could use a good project resource management tool that can help you automate your processes and reduce the need for administration.

4.  Create a team to handle risk management

Even if you have been thorough with at the planning and implementation stages, there could be slippages at some point. Though you might have deliberated about the possible risks during the planning stage, some unexpected challenges can come up. These can be better tackled by a risk management team. So, think about finding resources who have extensive experience in this field and can monitor and control the risks that could come up in the project lifecycle.

5.  Adopt different ways of operating across the resources and organization

One strategy doesn’t fit into all projects. Different types of projects, tasks, and different groups within a company, could gain from a specific approach. Therefore, make sure that the approaches you’ve finalized are aligned and generate efficiencies. But at a macro level, apply a standardized approach to get the metrics needed for a bird’s eye view of your organization. This will help you to plan, operate, and deliver projects seamlessly by using an array of styles like traditional, milestone-driven, Agile, collaborative, or iterative.

6.  Understand that project resource management is an ongoing process

You should know that challenges and conflicts will happen as unexpected issues and iterations are inevitable in project management. However, if you work together to sort out resource issues while focusing on your urgent and downstream priorities, then you will not falter. Again, a project resource management tool can come to your aid here.

7.  Report the time accurately for smooth project resource management

Many teams don’t feel comfortable in sharing their login or log out time or their timesheets. But reporting time accurately is a must for both seamless project and resource management. As a project manager, you can simplify this process by letting your resources track their effort and time in a project resource management software. This will automate the task and you can also pull out various availability and utilization reports whenever needed.

8.  Transparent project communication

It is important that all team members of a project know about each decision and status. They should also be aware of why a specific decision was taken. Therefore, it is important that transparency is maintained in the communication process. Each team member must have access to all the necessary project-related information so that they don’t feel left out and can offer their opinions while making any decisions.

9.  Correct any project deviations instantly

Manyprojects do tend to go beyond their delivery timelines or set budget. At times, unexpected issues and risks also occur. To ensure that these deviations are handled quickly so that the success of the project is not affected, it’s important to examine them proactively. Share comprehensive reports, dashboards, and plan meetings for spotting any deviations or risks. The sooner you identify and deal with such deviations, the better it will be for the overall project success.

10.  Opt for a good resource scheduling or project resource management tool

Many small and big organization use good resource scheduling tools like Enbraun’s eResource Scheduler. A project resource management tool not only provides easy access to the all current projects but also gives an insight into available resources so that you can schedule them efficiently. Advanced solutions like eResource Scheduler are highly configurable and offer features like comprehensive dashboards, drag and drop planning, and utilization and availability reports for better decision-making.

eResource Scheduler – Your Solution for Project Resource Management

Designed with the aim of offering a powerful yet affordable project resource management, scheduling and planning tool, this flagship software by Enbraun is a cloud-based solution. This collaborative and multi-user software is used by all types of organizations to effectively profile, recognize, and schedule their resources on various projects to amplify resource utilization and guarantee project success. If you want to maintain a detailed database of your human and non-human resources by using custom-defined fields and forms, then this is your go-to tool. Simply schedule your people on one or more projects by a drag n drop functionality on Gantt chart view. What’s more? You can keep all your users updated on the resource schedules and their availability in real-time. You can also add users giving them flexible access rights to protect confidential data. So, what are you waiting for? Sign up for a free trail now!