Resource Management for one or multiple project efforts

As you learn to think through project resource requirements, you’ll become better at predicting when your project will complete. It’s by no means a perfect science, but with more experience and a disciplined approach to reviewing this with your team, your estimates will improve over time.

Your reputation will also improve with experience.

You’ll be better able to deliver HIGHER quality results with less resource strain.

As people learn you are predictable with what you’re asking them to do, they’ll trust you and your teams more and adhere to the project schedule/plan because they know you’ll do your best to fit this in with other priorities and be efficient with their team.

Employees and team members will be happier because they’ll be better able to predict when they’ll be needed and for what activities. They’ll also be more empowered to say NO when needed.

Decision making improves as you put in front of stakeholders the key decisions (which are almost always about resources & priorities) you need help making. Without this type of discussion, decisions do not get made and then everyone’s unhappy with the lack of results.

You’ll earn a reputation for being a colleague people can rely upon because you ask for what you need and lead decision making activities to even out the load per the organization’s priorities.

An example – a continuous improvement steering committee had a lot of ideas of what they wanted to improve, but when it came down to prioritizing which efforts to do in the time period, there were a few clear winners. If the leader had not put these options in front of the team, it’s likely several would have been started at once but not had the full organization’s support.

Level one – what we normally do … and which is totally unrealistic in any organization. We plan as if we have infinite resources, and they can be available whenever we need them.

Level two – advanced for most of us … and will be a differentiator for you as a project leader. This is where you estimate how many hours you will require of all resources - people and other types of resources.

Level three – important for all organizations to do – but most often NOT done either formally or informally. Not doing a level 3 analysis results in inefficient teams & difficulty delivering to/on behalf of customers for the entire organization. Projects are late or not delivered at all. People are frustrated and leaders feel overwhelmed with too many decisions to make and a sense of everything happening all at once.

All projects experience constraints, delays, risks and resistance to change

A project plan helps the project leader to manage this process.

To develop your plan, use a planning horizon that works for your team;

• Agile approach – two-week sprints

• Waterfall approach - entire project plan is laid out at the beginning

The project manager and team will prepare and update the project plan - which can be known as the schedule or tracker.

Sponsors and Champions hold your team accountable for meeting the dates.

When dates slip, make sure you call this out and review it as a team and then with the sponsor/champion.

It's important to determine the root cause of slippage and develop a plan to address the root cause.

The project plan will HELP the team to stay on track and even PROTECT the team by soliciting assistance to move back on track when project conditions affect the team's ability to meet the plan.

Every project needs a project plan, which is updated at least weekly throughout the life of the project.

In this section, we will review different formats and tools that can be used to develop your project plan.

GANTT and RAIL project plan

Use this excel spreadsheet to develop and update your project plan. The GANTT format is helpful with people who need to see the high level project plan.

The RAIL - rolling action item list - is useful with team members who are interested in tracking the details of all action items/tasks.

Create the GANTT / 30-60-90 day one-page overview to share the project plan with others

This was one of my favorite topics as it showed us a complete picture of the project. It was also the driver of the core team's meeting and helped keep us on schedule.

I used the GANTT chart and it was very helpful.

Now that you have done the hard work of creating the milestones and high-level tasks, prepare your project plan to share with others.

You can simply share the plan by hiding the tasks in your Excel plan and showing only the milestones.

To do this, highlight (select) the rows and then hold down the control key, right click and select the HIDE command to hide these rows.

Once you hide all of these tasks, you will be left with this view of your project plan.

Alternatively, you could choose to use the PowerPoint template format for a more clean, easy to present view. See the template attached in this lesson.

Whichever format you choose to use with your team and stakeholders, this becomes your baseline project plan. As your project continues and changes, this view could change.

Your team will use a more detailed task tracker to manage the activities supporting these milestones.

Start with your GANTT and RAIL project plans you developed earlier in this course.

Take a look at your work breakdown structure - the tasks you have in your GANTT sheet. First, you must identify critical vs floating tasks. Critical path tasks define the minimum amount of time this project will take based on all your tasks and their dependencies upon one another.

• Critical – orange.

• Floating – blue.

Highlight the tasks which are critical path tasks in a different color so you can add focus on these during team reviews.

Looking at the example in this lesson, you have 11 days to onboard an employee.

Task A is introducing them to the team and sorting out what they’ll be doing during the first 90 days, 1 year, whatever timeframe you want to use.

Task D is sharing with them the information about benefits, compensation and having them sign up.

Task E is having them sign up for benefits, systems access, parking pass ….

Task F is their review with their manager – how’s it going!

Task B is the responsibility of the employee to read up on the products, processes and obtain training on personnel evaluation and HR policies and practices as well as compliance training.

Task C is having them meet with the welcome committee and assigning them to a few work teams for mentoring.

B&C can move anytime in this timeframe and not mess up the overall schedule, unless they extend beyond day 10. This means they are floating tasks.

All other tasks are on the critical path because they, once strung together, represent the minimum amount of time it will take to complete this project.

Next, take a detailed look at each task and the resources required as well as the total hours required of those resources. You do not have to be exact, but use an estimate based upon your experience and which is validated with the resources responsible for the task. Once you complete all tasks, you'll have a better idea of resource requirements across the life of your project.

You'll know which weeks (or time periods) have a heavy workload and which tasks are more demanding than others. Now, you can have a discussion with your stakeholders to ensure those resources are available.

If appropriate, add the additional cost required, over and above the people hours time.

What are gaps with resource plans?

Do you have one or more bottlenecks? A bottleneck is a point of congestion that stops or severely slows the system. (Your project!)

Do you know your critical path?

Are your resources available when you need them?

Are there certain resource or skill gaps that your project needs but for which you do not have a solution?

Make sure to document the gaps so that you can work with stakeholders to provide solutions.

You have multiple choices to address your gaps.

A good project manager will work with their stakeholders and leadership team to make decisions about how to address the gaps. Here are some choices:

1.Move floating tasks to even out your resource demand

2.Crash the plan – speed up the critical path

3.Obtain more resources

4.Extend the project duration

5.Split the tasks

6.Overlap the tasks

7.Reduce the quality (last resort)

8.Establish which tasks are time limited vs resource limited and prioritize the time limited ones.

Build your Resource Plan

1.Revisit your work breakdown structure to make sure you have the right tasks. Update your GANTT chart.

2.Identify the owner and the team (resources) who will work on this task.

3.Identify dependencies of tasks and highlight your critical task items.

4.Update your GANTT chart with an estimate of hours required per week for each task​. (for all resources combined)

5.Review the GANTT with your team and refine.​​

6.If you are leading multiple projects, consider doing a GANTT of GANTTS for a broader set of projects.