How do you establish capacity planning in project management and master its challenges? In this article, you will learn how to succeed in capacity planning in the project environment with practical tips. Here is an overview of the topics:

• Capacity planning definition
• Benefits and risks of capacity planning in project management
• 4 steps to successful capacity planning in project management
  • Step 1: Necessary processes with the right staff
  • Step 2: Complete and up-to-date project data
  • Step 3: Identify the actually available capacities
  • Step 4: Consolidate capacities and requirements
• Findings of the PMO Survey 2020 regarding capacity planning
• Conclusion and checklist: Capacity planning in project management

Let us begin!

Capacity Planning Definition

Strategic capacity planning is concerned with the predictive provision of appropriate resources in the form of employees with the necessary skills. It must ensure that appropriate employees can implement strategically relevant projects at the right time.

Note: The terms “(strategic) capacity planning” and “strategic resource planning” are synonymous.

The tasks of capacity planning in project management are usually taken on by portfolio managers or the Project Management Office (PMO) in coordination with:

1. Project managers (requirements regarding skills)
2. Team leaders (overview of available resources)

The figure below illustrates the responsibilities of the roles in the project environment of a company.

Benefits and Risks of Capacity Planning in Project Management

You can gain numerous benefits from employee capacity planning. With capacity planning, you:

• Make sure you reserve the most resources for the most important projects – rather than staffing unimportant ones
• Obtain a complete overview of all resources and their assignments to projects and basic load; this will keep you informed about the overall resource utilization at all times
• Know which additional projects you can start and carry out
• Identify resource bottlenecks in good time and can react to them according to corporate strategy
• Avoid resource conflicts, as they do not even arise

With inadequate or without capacity planning, you run various risks:

• Due to inadequate resource allocation, projects are not finished on time
• Project costs may rise, as there are too few appropriate resources
• Some business opportunities you cannot exploit, as the required skills are not available in good time
• You have significantly increased coordination efforts to resolve resource conflicts

All of this can result in dissatisfied customers, hence the importance of capacity planning!

4 Steps to Successful Capacity Planning in Project Management

This is how you reach your goal of successful capacity planning in four practical steps:

Step 1: Necessary Processes with the Right Staff

The strategic planning of capacities depends on:

• Dynamics at your company
• Your industry
• Number of projects
• Number of resources
• Duration of projects

Different companies tend to undergo the strategic process of capacity planning at different intervals:

• One to four times a year for companies developing and making products
• Possibly monthly for companies offering services
• Only on occasion for companies planning few major projects

Those involved in the strategic capacity planning process are:

• Management with strategic targets
• Team leaders and heads of department who must provide resource information
• Project managers who must update ongoing projects by the due date
• PMO preparing new projects properly and controlling the overall process of capacity planning

Make sure all data is complete and up to date by the due date. For this, all involved must pull together in unison.

To achieve this, you need a PMO that has the relevant competencies.

The PMO:

• Defines processes
• Trains the people involved
• Motivates them to perform their tasks in good time

The PMO may also support the project managers and team leaders in executing their tasks. This depends on the type of PMO you have.

Our tip: For successful strategic capacity planning, it is vital to have the support of a strong PMO with backing from top management.

Read this to find out more: PMO Setup in 4 Simple Steps

Promote the benefits of cyclical coordination (at set intervals) to all participants. This will motivate them to get involved. It is crucial to fix the intervals for coordination individually. They depend on your company’s possibilities and necessities.

Moreover, you must be minute in defining how to prepare as well as conduct planning and decision meetings.

You must manage to make all relevant decisions in a matter of hours. At the same time, the decisions on project start and resource availability need to be well founded. This will only work out if you have a clear agenda and stringent moderation in the context of a regular project portfolio meeting.

Our tip: See to the publication of the results of the project portfolio meetings. Employees tend to expect a lot from the PMO’s work and its controlling influence in the interest of better resource management. This is where there is a lot of potential for good news. If you sell it well.

Step 2: Complete and Up-to-Date Project Data

First, you register all projects with the essential information in a central database. This requires details such as:

• Name
• Project manager
• Sponsor
• Start
• Finish
• Traffic light indicators for status and resource requirements

For ongoing projects, the realistic remaining effort is most relevant – based on the current situation.

For new projects, it is necessary to meet the minimum requirement for resource planning. This means you must plan all required skills – not necessarily people – per month or quarter.

It is definitely not enough to look only at the total work without the distribution over time.

This is exactly where it starts to get complex.

Find out your optimum specificity by beginning with the roughest possible but still complete planning.

Our tip: Everyone asks for detailed planning, as it appears to be the better basis. But consider that this requires a higher planning effort. This effort will have to be made again and again in the future. So find out your optimum specificity. What is important above all is complete planning.

Prioritization of Projects

If there are more project proposals than the company can carry out, you need to prioritize them. This allows you to decide which new projects you can start.

There are various methods of prioritizing. They can be suitable to a greater or lesser extent – depending on the number of projects and decision-makers.

You might also like our Project Portfolio Management 7-Step Guide.

Eisenhower’s rating according to importance and urgency is one way. It will help you to get good results quickly.

But the easiest way is to make the decision-makers prioritize the list of new projects.

Our tip: Turn to the relevant decision-makers when determining weight and urgency of the projects.

If there are many decision-makers as well as many projects, you might have to consider a different course. You might need to establish strategic drivers. These must be prioritized and weighted and assigned to the projects accordingly. This will allow the system to calculate a prioritization.

Check on all accounts if the most effort is going towards the most important projects.

Here is how you do it: you match the importance of the drivers to the corresponding efforts of the assigned projects.

Identify unimportant projects which it might be best to discontinue. This can free up resources for more important new projects.

Observe the dependencies among the projects, too. Some development projects can only start once the results of basic projects are available. Maybe you have also planned several alternative scenarios. Naturally, only one of these needs to be implemented.

Simple Excel lists soon prove to be inadequate when it comes to prioritization and dependencies. Professional capacity planning tools provide excellent support for these challenges.

Our tip: When implementing new kinds of projects, e.g. in the R&D area, you often face unknowns or various approaches to a solution. Resource requirements tend to be relatively uncertain or rather different from case to case. We recommend you divide such projects into research and implementation. This allows you to limit the uncertainty in the research part via a time budget. Based on the results of the research you will be able to plan the implementation part anew and in a more precise way.

Further reading: PMO Tools for Successful Multi-Project Management

Step 3: Identify the Actually Available Capacities

It does not make sense to analyze each person individually. While this would be desirable, it would be too much effort. It would be confusing, too.

Displaying the total capacity of all employees in one chart is not wise either. Employees have different skills which you must deploy as required.

A clear and sensible level of detail can be obtained by consolidation at skill level. Some companies also form teams according to skills. In some circumstances, this permits planning at the level of these teams. In most cases, this is easy to implement.

Read this article to find out about using skills management in resource planning.

The level of detail regarding the skills should bear relation to the effort. The capacity plan must remain easy to understand at all times. The above principle also applies here: as rough as possible, as detailed as necessary.

Moreover, you must use the actual availability for projects in your calculations. There are two options to achieve this:

1. You deduct basic load or absences and operations from the total resource capacity
2. You compare the basic load and the projects with the full capacity

This is ultimately a matter of tools and the decision-makers’ preferences.

How the basic load or operations are dealt with is an important factor for planning precision. To keep it simple, you can use a flat estimate across the entire year.

But it is preferable to retrieve the team leaders’ planning on a monthly basis.

Our tip: Be sure to involve the team leaders in your project capacity planning. Provide them with a suitable tool for tactical resource planning. The tool should be capable of transferring the team leaders’ data to the project and portfolio management system. Team leaders have an interest in planning all activities outside of projects anyway. It can be simple to transfer their data from Excel into a professional tool.

Reading tip: 6 Steps to Resource Planning Implementation

Step 4: Consolidate Capacities and Requirements

At this point, you have the capacities for each skill and the requirements from the projects at hand. Now, you must examine how these fit together.

Find out about 7 success factors for multi-project management here.

In order to control them, all skills and their utilization must be viewable on one page in an appropriate way. After all, a project usually involves various skills.

With every change you make, the effect on all skills should be visible at once. This requires appropriate resource diagrams showing multiple skills on one screen.

When you add new projects to the portfolio, this must be in line with their priority and remaining availability.

Your approach must be similar to filling a glass with stones and sand. You add the large stones first, then the pebbles and at last the sand. Shaking and rattling helps the sand to fill all the gaps.

You may have excess capacity for some skills. In this case, identify tasks for the sales department or product management. Or you might identify potential for retraining. In times of ever-changing environments, this is a valuable insight – if it comes at the right time.

Learn more about Resource Management – Basics and Methods here.

A more common problem will be resource or skill overload. There are some simple and logical ways of resolving these:

• Compensate for the missing capacities with the aid of internal or even external resources
• Change the priority of the projects or drop some projects altogether
• Postpone the projects far enough into the future that they fit into the given resource situation

For all three options, you will need an optimum database at any rate.

But be aware that the database is based on personal estimates. And that it is exposed to political currents.

There is one difficulty you will face time and again when communicating about the workload of the teams. You must make it clear to all involved that the glass is full and nothing new can be taken on.

One trick: Ask this simple question whenever too much is expected to go into the portfolio: what can we remove to make room for the new? This will create the necessary awareness among all stakeholders.

You could also ask what part of “no” they did not understand.

Enjoying a drink together can help as well. This will relieve pressure and improve the atmosphere. After all, there is always room for this in a glass filled with stones, pebbles and sand!

Reliable Data Is the Basis of Successful Capacity Management

No matter whether they are about bringing in external resources or postponing projects: the decisions remain human decisions. But you should always make these decisions based on the best possible data.

To obtain this data, you need suitable software tools for capacity planning. Without the appropriate portfolio management software support, which also helps with strategic resource planning, you will find the tasks involved hard to master.

Are you working with tables in Excel or something similar? Are you dealing with a certain degree of complexity and amount of data? In this case, you will only achieve the best outcome in capacity planning and decision-making with a lot of effort – or not at all.

Our tip: Define your precise objectives and requirements before investing in a tool. Plan a phased introduction of the tool to avoid overwhelming those involved. Only then does the purchase make sense. And you are on the right path to higher resource efficiency.

Reading tip: Requirements for resource planning software for the roles involved

Findings of the PMO Survey 2020 regarding Capacity Planning

In the context of a comprehensive TPG Survey on the state of the PMO in 2020, we derived an interesting result from the responses of 330 companies with a PMO.

Learn more about the challenges of resource management – capacity planning as well as tactical and operational resource planning.

Companies that can be classed as high and top performers have implemented strategic capacity planning much better than low performers.

In the case of the low performers, strategic capacity planning almost does not feature among the responsibilities of the PMO.

In addition, top-performing companies were half as likely to name lack of resources as a reason for unsuccessful projects.

The top performers did not name insufficient staff qualification as a reason for unsuccessful projects either. This was because they were clearly better positioned in terms of skills management than the other performance levels.

What we can take away from this: strategic capacity planning and good skills management clearly pay off in the pursuit of project success.

Conclusion and Checklist: Capacity Planning in Project Management

This article has introduced four important steps to successful strategic capacity planning:

• Step 1: Establish all necessary processes with the appropriate staff – from top management and the PMO to team leaders, department heads and project managers.
• Step 2: Provide for complete and up-to-date project data and prioritize your projects.
• Step 3: Identify the capacities that are actually available at skills level. To do this, define the basic load and confer with the team leaders at regular intervals.
• Step 4: Consolidate the requirements (step 2) and the capacities (step 3). Identify underload as well as overload and try to balance them.

In addition, you have learned about two further important parameters. These can make for successful resource capacity planning in project management:

• An efficient PMO with backing from top management
• A suitable software tool to provide a solid database

Find the most important points summed up in the following checklist:

Checklist Capacity Planning in Project Management

• Appoint a PMO with the appropriate competencies
• Identify the roles and individuals involved
• Promote the benefits of strategic resource / capacity management
• Warn stakeholders of the risks of going without capacity management
• Ensure a coordination process with meetings at set intervals
• Keep all ongoing and new projects up to date
• Control the priorities of the projects
• Consider the dependencies between the projects
• See to complete resource planning by the team leaders, i.e., team capacity planning
• Be exact in preparing and conducting planning sessions
• Create a clear overview by means of a dynamic chart with project lines and resource diagrams
• Introduce the topic step by step to avoid overwhelming those involved
• Provide each role with the appropriate IT tool

Our final tips

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management. Download the eBook now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter to make sure you receive all our updates.

Is there anything you would like to add regarding project capacity planning? What gives you a headache? We’ll be happy to respond to your comment below.

Der Beitrag Capacity Planning in Project Management – 4 Important Success Factors (with Checklist) erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

In the following sections, you will learn about:

• Definition: What is resource management?
• Why is resource management in project management important?
• What are the tasks of resource management?
• What are the benefits of resource management?
• Responsibilities of a resource manager / resource planner
• Areas of resource management in project management
• Challenges of resource management in project management
• Results for resource planning from the PMO Survey 2020
• Further relevant articles with tips

Let us now take a look at the basics of resource management in project management.

Note: We are using the terms resource management and resource planning interchangeably.

Definition: What Is Resource Management?

Resource management, aka resource planning, is a key element of project management. It ensures that projects and portfolios have access to the necessary resources (staff, facilities, etc.) at all times and are used as effectively as possible. It is very closely related to the development of schedules and cost plans.

Why Is Resource Management in Project Management Important?

The goal of every company is to reach its objectives with as little effort as possible. “Resource management in project management”, or simply “resource planning”, helps companies achieve this goal.

Knowing what resources are required for current and future projects helps you plan more effectively. In this way, you will use the available resources more economically. They will not be overloaded, and you can procure resources needed for the future in good time (keyword: skills management).

What Are the Tasks of Resource Management?

If you are seeking a resource planning implementation, you probably have some or all of the below resource management tasks in mind:

• Planning and resource allocation: Strategic planning and allocation of capital, staff, time and other resources with the aim of deploying resources where you most urgently need them
• Optimizing resource utilization: Maximizing efficiency and productivity of the existing resources as well as minimizing bottlenecks and idle time
• Risk management: Monitoring and analyzing resource allocation to identify potential risks, evaluate and minimize them
• Revising resource allocation: Revising resource allocations for projects in accordance with changing circumstances in the project environment as a reaction to new requirements and opportunities
• Strategic capacity planning: Assessing the current and future resource capacity to ensure there are sufficient resources to meet the needs of the project portfolio
• Supporting corporate objectives: Supporting the long-term objectives and success of the company by ensuring that the right resources are available in the right place at the right time

What Are the Benefits of Resource Management?

Here are some of the key benefits of resource management in project management:

• More reliable planning: You can avoid bottlenecks more easily if you identify your resource needs early on. You can also calculate and plan the availability of people with the necessary skills. Doing so provides greater reliability at all levels.
• Less overload: Individuals and teams that are in high demand often suffer from an excessive workload, and having a clear overview of your resource utilization helps avoid this problem. Thus, you create greater job satisfaction and employee retention.
• Well-documented: If your project fails due to missing resources, having good documentation can help you prove that your resource planning made the best possible use of the available resources. It provides a valuable lesson for future projects.

Responsibilities of a Resource Manager / Resource Planner

Resource managers or resource planners are key players in the project environment. They are in charge of identifying, coordinating and optimizing the various resources of a project. Typically, this includes staff, financial resources, materials and time.

Resource planners develop strategies and implement systems to use resources efficiently and thus achieve project goals. This requires extensive knowledge of the project goals as well as internal processes and external market conditions.

In a matrix organization, it is usually the team leader who is responsible for resource management in their own team. Good tactical resource planning at team level fully covering all activities in the team makes it possible to predict resource bottlenecks, avoid overload and minimize risks. This also improves the validity of commitments in response to requests from the projects.

In addition, modern and powerful resource management software can make this task considerably easier. It helps resource managers plan, monitor and control resources.

Areas of Resource Management in Project Management

Gartner divides project resource planning into five distinct areas as shown in the following graphic.

TPG The Project Group, on the other hand, identifies only three levels in project resource management:

• Strategic capacity planning in the project portfolio
• Tactical resource planning between team and project
• Operational work planning at task level

The following graphic shows these tasks and their interdependencies with regard to roles:

Challenges of Resource Management in Project Management

In this chapter, we focus on the challenges of resource management in its three areas.

Challenges of Strategic Resource Planning / Capacity Planning

The goal of strategic resource planning in project management or capacity planning is to ensure optimum resource utilization based on the company’s goals and the product portfolio. It should also identify:

• What resources, and how many of these resources, are needed for upcoming projects and general operations?
• What skills must be procured or trained?
• Which prioritization in the project portfolio must be made in the event of lack of resources?

With insufficient strategic resource planning, you run the following risks:

• Due to inadequate resource allocation, projects may not be finished on time
• Project costs will rise, as there are too few appropriate resources
• Some business opportunities you cannot exploit, as you are unable to obtain the required skills in good time
• Your coordination efforts for resolving resource conflicts are strikingly increased

It depends on the project types at your company how flexible you can be in your resource planning. Prioritizing these projects as part of project portfolio management is a key objective.

Three Project Types and the Differences between Them

A distinction is made between three project types:

• In-house developments
• Commissioned projects
• Organizational projects

How do these three project types differ in priority and what effect does this have on the required resources?

• Prioritization of in-house developments
  With a portfolio of in-house development projects, you have a good starting point. The decision-makers themselves can decide when to launch a particular project. They can generally shape their own resource peaks. So, it is their responsibility to make rational, comprehensible decisions when prioritizing the projects.
• Prioritization of commissioned projects
  Clients can request, cancel, or approve a commissioned project at any time without prior warning. You have to deal with vague forecasts. Each client thinks they are king. If you are responsible for a sales pipeline like that, you will need to learn how to deal with uncertainty. You will need to keep an eye on the order levels when scheduling your resources.
• Prioritization of company projects
  Internal company projects should be treated the same as any client project. One advantage here is that fewer people are involved in prioritization. On the other hand, these internal projects tend to be the first ones to be postponed when resources are scarce.

Our tip: Determine early which of these three project types you are dealing with. Doing so will help you understand which of the typical challenges of resource management you will face in managing your project. Develop appropriate processes in response. A project management office is exactly the right body for this task.

Challenges of Tactical Resource Planning

Team leaders generally have the final word when it comes to allocation of the necessary project resources. Project managers expect team leaders to approve their resource requests as quickly as possible. This enables you to schedule these people for your projects.

However, you also need reassurance that these approved resources will actually be available when you need them. This helps minimize any changes to the plans later.

Suggested related article: Best Practices for the Resource Planning Process

However, this can cause problems for the team leaders.

• The same team leader can be repeatedly confronted with requests from various project managers at different times.
• This makes it difficult for team leaders to have a sound basis on which to base their decisions.
• A new request today can negate an agreement made yesterday.
• Team members often have tasks (such as operational tasks) in addition to their project work – which, in turn, affects productivity in the project.

Team leaders often deal with several project managers simultaneously. Project-related requests submitted to the team leaders must always be well-organized. You should set up a resource planning process for this. Agreed upon, reliable processes and a fixed cadence for resource approval are essential for everyone involved.

Our tip: Get everyone involved to agree on a fixed schedule for resource planning. However, this schedule should be modified only in cases of emergency. This provides reliability and a better overview of the capacity utilization for the next 1-2 cycles. This is another case in which a PMO as a central body can ensure resource planning processes are implemented.

Challenges of Operational Resource Planning / Work Management

Project managers usually need the respective team leaders to approve their requests for qualified employees. We discussed this in the previous chapter. The next issue is work management – who does what, and when?

In matrix organizations, the project managers have access to the allocated resources for the specified time period. The next step is for them to plan the required tasks or – more sensibly and even better – have the team members plan these tasks themselves.

In this case, the challenge is to regularly document the status. This enables project managers to clearly see what progress has been made and what still needs to be done. You need the right tools to do this. Ideally, you would connect the tools in such a way as to make it possible to exchange current data in both directions.

Our tip: Create an IT environment in which the project manager’s scheduling tools and the team leader’s work management tools are integrated. This gives you the ability to compare the plan and actual values at the push of a button before any upcoming status meeting. For instance, powerful integration middleware will provide the option to exchange data between different systems.

Results for Resource Planning from the PMO Survey 2020

The extensive PMO Survey 2020 investigated the most important areas of responsibility in 330 companies with PMO. In the participating companies, resource management is the least established area of responsibility compared to the other PMO functions.

According to the results of the survey, PMOs with fewer than 3 members are in a decidedly worse position for resource management than PMOs with more members. The number of responses stating “Improvements are planned” is only slightly higher for PMOs with more members. However, the share of responses stating resource planning was “Well-established” are at least three to four times as high.

Resource Management in Projects

13% have operational resource planning (task planning in the projects) in place and respond that this is well-established without need for changes. 28% have it in place but are planning further improvements. 14% are planning to start in the following 12 months, and almost half the respondents are not going to establish operational project resource planning at all.

The support of resource planning in projects clearly has a huge impact on project success which the top performing PMOs deliver best.

Further Relevant Articles with Tips

Here are some brief descriptions of further articles about resource management in project management on the TPG Blog.

Article 1:
Resource Planning Implementation – How to Be Quick and Successful with 6 Steps
Achieve improved resource planning in order to quickly optimize scheduling, identify conflicts in good time and resolve them quickly.

Article 2:
Solutions for the Resource Planning Process in Line and Matrix Organizations
Establish the right processes for the smoothest possible coordination of resources between project and team management.

Article 3:
Agile Resource Planning – Can Agile Planning Reduce Resource Conflicts in Projects?
You can indeed avoid resource conflicts with agile methods. The prerequisite is that you can handle the necessary constraints.

Article 4:
Capacity Planning in Project Management – 4 Important Success Factors
Get to know four key steps to introducing successful strategic capacity planning in the project portfolio.

Article 5:
Skills Management – Definition, Benefits and Prerequisites
Competency management and skills management are an advanced form of resource planning. Learn about the primary advantages from a strategic and tactical-operational viewpoint.

Article 6:
Requirements for Resource Planning Tools for the Roles in the Project Environment
The tasks assigned to stakeholders in the context of resource planning are very different. Project management tools alone will not be sufficient for their requirements. What are the right tools for the roles and what must they be able to do?

Article 7:
Resource Engagements in MS Project – What They Are, How to Use Them and a Better Alternative
Learn step by step how to use the Resource Engagements feature in MS Project 2016 and higher, what it can do and where its limitations lie.

Our final tips

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management. Download the eBook now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter to make sure you receive all our updates.

What has been your experience with resource management in project management? Is there a critical aspect that you feel we have missed? We look forward to receiving your comment!

Der Beitrag Resource Management in Project Management: Basics and Areas for Beginners erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

This changed with Microsoft Project Professional 2016 or Project Online.

Starting with these versions, the tool has offered the new feature Resource Engagements. The feature is only available in combination with Project Online or Project Server. It acts as a direct communication channel between project managers and team leaders when coordinating the team members working on projects.

This article tells you step by step how to use this feature to coordinate resources between project and line management and what to bear in mind.

• Resource Engagements in MS Project from Version 2016
• Notes on Resource Engagements in MS Project from Version 2016
• What could be a solution for tactical resource planning
• How to work with Resource Engagements
• The project manager’s request
• The team leader’s view and response
• Functional limitations of the feature Resource Engagements
• Including operations for complete capacity planning
• The project manager’s view after approval
• The practical alternative: TPG CoReSuite Team Manager App
• Conclusion – Resource Engagements in Microsoft Project

Please note: Are you already familiar with earlier versions of Microsoft Project? The new feature Resource Engagements replaces the hitherto existing Resource Plans.

Resource Engagements in MS Project from Version 2016

Project managers can send line managers resource requests for the desired project team members – irrespective of their prior planning. They propose which resources they could use for their projects over what time period.

Subsequently, the team leaders get to see these requests in the Project Web Access. Now they can handle the Resource Engagements. They either accept them fully or in part or otherwise reject them entirely.

Their response is returned to the project. Thus, the project manager receives feedback, also through comments.

Planning a resource planning implemenation? Find out how to do it fast and well!

You will find an overview of the most important properties of the Resource Engagements in MS Project 2016 below.

After this, we list the capabilities we find indispensable in a top tool for tactical resource planning between project and line managers.

This gives you an overview of:

• What Microsoft Project currently offers
• Where there is still room for improvement

Notes on Resource Engagements in MS Project from Version 2016

• Actual resource utilization: The team leader lacks the overview of the actual resource utilization. This has a reason: activities outside of projects such as absences and operations cannot be planned here. The team leader still has to plan these in line projects.
• Booking resources: The team leader can also create new engagements for an existing project without prior request. But it is impossible to book resources for future projects which have not been added to the Project Server yet.
• Parallel planning: Requests and commitments always exist in parallel to project planning. They cannot be automatically synchronized.
• Resource engagements can only be created in relation to projects and not per task. But this is not sufficient.

What Could Be a Solution for Tactical Resource Planning

• Direct requests from the detailed plan: Project managers should be able to send requests to team leaders directly from their project plans. This would save time, as they would not have to administer requests separately in an additional view.
• Absences and operations: Team leaders should use a tool made especially for their tasks. It should allow them to administer operations, absences, and project activities. The requests for projects should be directly visible in this tool. It should allow them to easily make commitments.
• Booking resources: Bookings for future projects should be possible, even before these have been set up on the Project Server.
• Status of resource utilization: The status of both resource utilization and project requests should be indicated by a combined traffic light view.
• Priorities: It should be possible to transfer commitments for prioritized projects automatically.

Reading tip: All you need to know about Project for the Web Becoming Planner

How to Work with Resource Engagements

Below you find a simple example of the process in Microsoft Project 2016. The project manager’s request and the team leader’s response are outlined step by step.

Please note that you may need to activate this function by choosing:

1. Settings
2. PWA Settings
3. Additional Server Settings (in the section Operational Policies)

The Project Manager’s Request

Here is what you do as a project manager. After creating the project plan and assigning resources, you select the view Resource Plan (see figure below).

In the view Resource Plan, you can find the new commands in the ribbon Engagements.

Click Add Engagement in the ribbon Engagements to open the dialog box Engagement Information (see figure below). The name of the resource selected under Engagements appears in the dialog box field Resource.

Enter Description, Start and Finish of the assignment period. Select the desired allocation by Units in % or Work in hours and enter a value. You can add optional Comments.

Once you have created Resource Engagements, these are shown in the view Resource Plan per resource (see figure below). The table on the left gives you information such as:

• The resource’s Name
• Proposed Start, Finish and Max Units of your request

In the section on the right, you can see the Prop. Max Units on a timeline. You could also display for comparison:

• Proposed Work
• Work planned in the tasks
• Other fields

Unfortunately, the view Resource Plan cannot be combined with other views.

Once you have created all required resource engagements, you need to submit them to the team leader for approval. You will find the respective menu item in the ribbon Engagements (see figure below).

The Team Leader’s View and Response

After the project manager has sent the Resource Requests, the team leader can see them in the Resource Center of the Project Web App. Here is what you do as a team leader. After selecting the resources you want to look at, select Resource Requests (see figure below).

You can see all Resource Requests for the resources you selected. The column State (see figure below) tells you whether you have:

• Already accepted the request
• Already rejected the request
• Not yet handled the request

Select Timephased Data to analyze the requests on the time line (see figure below).

This view also shows information regarding the:

• State of the request in the State column
• Committed Units, Start and Finish dates

You can select Resource Requests in order to accept or reject them. In addition, you can override the information in the time phases.

The options Filter and Group By allow you to select the way in which the required information is presented. Select the ribbon Options to define what date range and units to display.

After clicking Accept or Reject in response to a Resource Request (see figure above), you have the option to enter Comments (see figure below).

Note that you must select a request first in order to activate this function.

The New View Capacity and Engagements Heatmap for the Team Leader

You can check beforehand if the capacity is sufficient for a new engagement. To do this, select the view Capacity Planning (see figure below).

The Capacity Planning view allows you to choose another view called Capacity and Engagements Heatmap (see figure below).

To display the outstanding requests for analysis, activate the checkbox Include proposed bookings (in the view Capacity and Engagements Heatmap).

The standard settings (see figure below) present underloads exceeding the value 10% in blue. Overloads of over 10% are marked in red. The corresponding time period is presented in green:

• if the sum equals the request
• with a maximum upward or downward tolerance of 10%

Customize the % thresholds to your requirements directly in the menu.

Functional Limitations of the Feature Resource Engagements

As mentioned above, resource requests are created in parallel to project planning.

This means that the view Capacity and Engagements Heatmap will not contain any information about resource assignments in project plans (of the corresponding projects or others).

On the other hand, you will not find information regarding the Resource Requests of the projects in the four hitherto existing capacity planning views:

• Resource Utilization
• Resource Utilization by Project
• Remaining Availability
• Work by Resource

Note: To still attain a coherent capacity overview, all project managers have to:

• consistently update the resource request when they modify their detailed plan
• always submit them for approval

 

This also applies when an entire project is postponed. In this case, it is necessary to update every single resource request. The automatic transfer from the detailed plan would be a logical function but is unfortunately not available.

Furthermore, the line manager has to make sure there is a resource request for every detailed plan.

There is a way of enforcing this. Activate the new option Resource requires approval for all project assignments in the Edit Resource view. Repeat this step for all resources requiring this type of capacity monitoring.

If you activate this option, the project manager receives an alert whenever a resource assignment is insufficient (see figure below).

Including Operations for Complete Capacity Planning

You may want to allow for operations in order to attain complete capacity planning. For this, you can use option 1 or option 2:

1. Set the maximum capacity of resources to the percentage you anticipate for project activities (i.e. 80% instead of 100% for full-time employees). This value will also be set for the views:
   • Resource Utilization
   • Resource Utilization by Project
   • Remaining Availability
   • Work by Resource
2. Create one project per team for operations. In this project, you plan those operations which are unrelated to projects.
   You may also want to show these activities in the Resource Requests view. To do this, you would have to create resource requests for each of them. This is cumbersome.

All capacity-planning views include absences defined in the resource calendars. This is irrespective of the focus on resource requests or project planning.

You might also like: MS Project Tip about Earned Value Analysis – Read now!

Yet nowhere are the absences designated as such in contrast to the capacities. This complicates the rescheduling of vacation. Therefore, it is usually easier to plan absences as tasks in a team project.

The Project Manager’s View after Approval

The team leader has accepted the Resource Request. The project manager can see this upon next opening the project plan.

It is also possible to track the approval state while working on a project. Click Refresh in the ribbon Engagements to do this (see Figure 13).

You can identify accepted engagements by the value Committed in the column Engagement Status (in the view Resource Plan). In addition, you can find the data approved by the line manager in the column Com. Max Units.

If you double-click on an engagement, you can see all comments in the communication (see figure below).

But one thing you will look for in vain. There is no direct juxtaposition of the work in the detailed plan and the requests or commitments. Unfortunately, the project manager can only access this information in separate rows. There is neither a display of the difference nor a heatmap.

The Practical Alternative: TPG CoReSuite Team Manager App

Unlike Resource Engagements in MS Project, TPG CoReSuite Team Manager App does not require parallel editing of detailed plans and resource requests. The resource requirements for a project result directly from the detailed plan. They are aggregated at project level.

According to preference, TPG CoReSuite Team Manager App works with or without Project Server or Project Online. This means you can start managing your resources straight away by maintaining the team leaders’ data manually at first.

Only later do you link this information to Project Server or Project Online. Projects and resources are consolidated by their names.

TPG CoReSuite Team Manager App at a Glance

• Resource requests do not have to be created separately.
• Team leaders do not have to maintain line projects in Project Professional.
• Resources and projects from Project Server or Project Online can be imported depending on access privileges.
• If project tasks have been postponed the changes are saved and highlighted for better visibility.
  You can add absences as well as general and individual operations manually or import them from other sources.
• The requirements are contrasted with the requests in a color-configurable overview.
• One view shows the states of resource utilization and project commitments side by side. This provides an optimal overview to facilitate the team leader’s decisions.
• Utilization charts aid with the analysis. For the display, it is possible to activate any desired projects and resources.
• The sums of the teams can be aggregated bottom-up to a department overview and can be analyzed from there via drill-down.

Conclusion – Resource Engagements in Microsoft Project

Resource Engagements in Microsoft Project Professional or Project Online are a function extension. Their purpose is to support communication in a matrix organization. This article has taught you how project managers and team leaders can use the function for their coordination process.

As a project manager you:

• plan with resources
• deduct your resource request accordingly
• submit the request to the respective line manager

As a line manager you:

• regard these resource requests as proposals
• can accept, change, or even reject the request
• return your response to the project level

You have also learned that this Microsoft Project feature does not provide all that is necessary for the coordination process between project and line managers.

Project managers and team leaders still have to close the gap between what they have and what they need. They are required to manually synchronize the results from their resource requests with their detailed plans. This is the only way to obtain a reliable source of information.

Finally, you have learned about TPG CoReSuite Team Manager App, a practical alternative to MS Project Resource Engagements.

Our final tips

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management. Download the eBook now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter to make sure you receive all our updates.

Do you use the Resource Engagements feature in Microsoft Project? What is your experience? We look forward to reading your comments below!

Der Beitrag Resource Engagements in MS Project – What They Are, How to Use Them and a Better Alternative erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

You will learn about the following topics in this article:

• Definition skills management / competency management?
• The benefits of skills management
• The prerequisites for skills management
• How to implement skills management
• Skills in tactical resource planning
• Long-term focus when assigning resources
• Organizational changes after implementing skills management
• The strategic benefits of skills / competency management
• Conclusion – Skills management in project management

Let us begin!

Definition Skills Management / Competency Management

Competency or skills management is the refinement of resource management. It makes it possible to specify resource requirements in detail according to skills and their characteristics. If the employees’ skills are recorded in this way, this even enables automatic resource allocation.

This makes skills management a powerful tool for using resources efficiently in projects. It has a strategic, a tactical and an operational aspect.

Strategic: From a strategic perspective, skills management is a combination of knowledge and human resources (HR) management. The aim is to determine the different skills required and the corresponding capacity requirements. This must be based on the strategic focus. It is possible to set priorities in good time to advance the desired long-term development of the workforce.

Tactical: Tactical skills management is a whole different story. Team leaders have to provide the right number of suitable staff for the required dates. In consultation with the HR department, they must look after their staff’s training and induction.

Operational: As part of their career management, individuals receive training and development according to the requirements of their teams.

The Difference between Skills and Competency Management

Competency management ‘means “the systematic handling of the company’s competence in line with the company’s overall objectives”. In this case, it operates at the strategic level of corporate management. Skill[s] management, in turn, operates at the level of personnel selection, personnel development, and the deployment of personnel in various positions.’ (Source: Mystery Minds)

However, these terms are often used interchangeably and synonymously.

The Benefits of Skills Management

Skills are abilities possessed by a team member at the company. Usually, each team member possesses several skills. These can be software skills, product-specific knowledge, certifications (e.g. as a project manager) or languages.

From the project management perspective, skills management represents a more flexible management of resources. It makes it possible to define the resource requirements for the projects not as individuals but generically as skills.

Thus, it becomes faster to determine – in principle and before the project start – whether a project can be carried out with the available capacities and skills. In subsequent weeks / months, the generic resources will be replaced with individual names.

Learn more about tactical resource planning: Project Resource Management

This approach carries an important benefit. With generic resources, you will have to put less effort into rescheduling projects. After all, no individuals are scheduled for activities further in the future whose availability might change in the meantime.

This even permits a tool-based automatic resource allocation, if the skills of the staff are registered accordingly. However, this approach does not consider social aspects or other soft factors which are usually impossible to reproduce in software.

This is why such methods often do not produce optimal results. In such a case, software can make suggestions. But it will not be able to fully replace good collaboration between project managers and team leaders.

The added value for the company is that deficits become visible. As a result, these can be addressed specifically. Therefore, you should always aim to have a team with predominantly evenly distributed knowledge.

This makes it easier to distribute the requested skills to all team members. The fewer differences exist between the team members’ skills, the less complicated the planning and redistribution will be.

Flexible personnel placement is also a key factor in strengthening competitiveness.

Our tip: Try to spread the knowledge as evenly as possible within the teams. The fewer differences exist between the team members’ skills, the less complicated it is to plan and reallocate the requested activities.

The Prerequisites for Skills Management

The most important prerequisite for making skills management work is this: the abilities of the staff members must be documented as fully as possible.

In bigger companies, this will not be possible without the approval of the employee organization.

Gathering employee-related data is one of the biggest challenges. Once their skills become transparent, staff members often fear disadvantages compared to other colleagues. This concerns e.g. personnel decisions such as promotions or lay-offs.

The significance of skills management is also highlighted in the PM Trends article.

You will only be able to alleviate these fears on the part of the employees, if both sides derive real benefit from skills management. At any rate, you should ensure that the recording of skills is integrated in a consistent personnel development plan. It can include, for example, further training, incentive systems or the like.

This enables staff members to see a benefit for themselves. After all, they have improved opportunities to further develop their own skills and increase their value for the company. Once the staff see more advantages than disadvantages, you will be more likely to obtain the necessary acceptance for skills management.

Our tip: Alleviate the fears on the part of the employees and further the acceptance of skills management with a consistent personnel development plan. Collaboration with the responsible bodies is a vital prerequisite for this.

How to Implement Skills Management

Step 1: Recording the Skills

• Option A

A first step towards the implementation of skills management can be to record the skills by teams rather than individuals. In such a case, the team leader names the skills of his or her team in general.

But this makes the team leader the only one who can select individuals from the team according to their abilities. By and large, this rules out automated selection.

On the one hand, this anonymization of skills will help you reduce the fears of the staff mentioned above. On the other hand, it may reduce the motivation in the teams, as there is a lack of personal incentives.

• Option B

You would take a different approach if you wanted to plan the individual skills for each person. In that case, each member of staff should be requested at regular intervals to update their own data and to align them with the responsible team leader.

• Option C

An even better system for skills management can be achieved if you also document the level of the skills. This gives you the details of how well certain skills are commanded by the respective team member. In the end, it is essential to know whether a newcomer can be assigned to a task or if it requires an expert.

However, this is also the most sensitive point for agreement with the employee organization. But as long as the staff members declare this themselves or a uniform qualification system exists, you should be able to overcome this hurdle, too.

Step 2: Handling Skills and Capacities

Each team member has an employment contract. From the capacity of weekly or monthly working hours, it is possible to calculate the project availability after subtracting vacation times and operations.

Ideally, you will have several people with the same skills on one team. In such a case, their availabilities can be added. For example, you may receive requests for three people of which you have ten on your team. You can respond to the requests easily by looking at these team members’ remaining availability.

But how would it be if your team members had different skills?

Your ten engineers can handle five different technologies, but not each of them can handle all five. Some may be able to handle only one, others may command all five.

The capacities and availabilities of the team members with multiple skills should be considered irrespective of the number of skills.

Example: If it is possible to have one team member, who is project manager, software developer and database administrator, you still have one team member with three skills rather than three team members with one skill each. Therefore, you cannot state capacities per team member and skill in such a case, but only per team member.

Someone may ask about the available capacity for software developers or database administrators. The answer might be eight for the first case and five for the second. But you only have ten people on the team. Still, the answer would be correct as long as the requests do not come all at once.

After all, your individual team members cannot do everything at once. At times, they will only be able to do the one thing or the other.

One solution for the dilemma of the multiple skills would be to allocate half the capacity of a person to one skill and the other half to another skill.

But be aware: this would entail that an overload situation would appear in the case of an engagement of over 50 percent for an individual even though he or she still has remaining availability.

This is why we recommend the normal allocation of the capacity to the individuals, regardless of their skills. The skill allocation per person ensues step by step.

Our tip: Allocate the capacity to the individuals regardless of their skills at first. In a second step, perform the skill allocation per person.

Skills in Tactical Resource Planning

In tactical resource planning, skills management is different depending on whether you are in a line or a matrix organization.

Note: By tactical resource planning, we mean the coordination between project and line managers. It depends on the company’s form or organization (matrix or line). The goal is to meet the requirements for resources with the necessary skills for projects in a timely manner using staff from the line. This is usually the team leaders’ task.

Skills Management in Line Organizations

In the line organizations, skills management at a tactical level is not very challenging. The project manager will forward the required work packages to the team leader. The latter knows the skills within his or her team. Thus, he can assign them optimally.

Skills Management in Matrix Organizations

Yet, in matrix organizations, the project manager must define the requirements for the desired project team members. These can be checked for accordance and availability with the available skills in the different teams.

Good skills management can speed up this process considerably and also improve it. With it, it will transpire quickly which skills are required, who matches these at which site and how well. And who is also available besides.

A degree of anonymization will come with a growing number of people to assign and their dispersion across different sites. This can actually be of advantage. It forces project managers to directly request skills rather than people, as they do not actually know the people.

What makes this an advantage? Without skills management, project managers will only ever request the resources they know directly. Thus, specialisms will come sneaking in, which is doubly risky. The specialists are booked constantly and also overbooked, as alternative people for the tasks are “unknown”.

However, this will not give the “known” people time to share their knowledge, nor will it benefit their health. And in the worst case, resources, which are already scarce, are unexpectedly absent. This will be much more painful than maintaining a system for skills management.

What is more, requesting skills rather than people forces the project managers to formulate the requirements more precisely. This in turn enables the team leaders to distribute the work more evenly among all suitable individuals.

Our tip: Rely on requesting skills rather than people. This allows the team leader to distribute the work more evenly among all suitable individuals.

Long-Term Focus When Assigning Resources

When assigning resources to projects, you can distinguish between two approaches:

• You focus on the advantages for the project: as a planner, you employ largely those team members that best meet the requirements. These individuals will carry out the tasks fastest and with high quality.
• You focus on the advantages for your company: you rely more heavily on individuals who do not (fully) possess the required skills. These will develop in the course of the project and acquire the required know-how. This may take longer, the profit may be lower, but you create knowledge. The project will have disadvantages, but the company will profit.

Try to follow the second approach whenever possible. Ultimately, more people with frequently required skills become available this way. This makes future human resource planning more flexible.

In addition, you reduce the danger of exclusive knowledge. This decreases your company’s dependence on individual people.

At the same time, the motivation of these knowledge bearers may increase if they get the opportunity to learn, become more important and can accomplish more than just routine jobs.

Our tip: As a team leader, rely more heavily on individuals who do not (fully) possess the required skills. This makes your future human resource planning more flexible, as you create knowledge in this way.

Organizational Changes after Implementing Skills Management

When planning with staff skills, it is irrelevant for the project manager which organizational unit a resource belongs to. All he or she needs is a note as to whether there is sufficient capacity for the required skills at the required date.

Ideally, skills management software would report:

• which resources at the company possess the required skills
• whether the latter are available during the desired period of time

Another interesting read: Requirements for Resource Planning Tools

If skills management is done consistently, the request from the projects will not be addressed to the team leader directly. The future coordination process of tactical resource planning will be possible e.g. via central resource managers or a Project Management Office (PMO).

This becomes possible, because the company’s organization structure changes accordingly. Certain resources could be allocated from a central and location-independent pool.

Ideally, you would have:

• Staff members used only in projects who do not carry out any operations (except for team meetings)
• Staff members only carrying out operations who are not used in projects

The advantage is that this further increases the plannability in the team. However, this is only possible where:

• Tasks can be separated clearly (for this, the workload on both sides, i.e. for project activities and operations, must be stable, without the necessity to change over and over again)
• Knowledge building can be ensured, which is often required on both sides

The Strategic Benefits of Skills / Competency Management

Let us briefly look at the strategic aspect of skills management. It provides the following benefits:

• In project portfolios, it will reveal if bottlenecks for capacities and skills are to be expected, and when.
• It becomes possible to counteract these in good time, i.e. via targeted training, recruitment or cooperations cooperation are ways to prevent future bottlenecks.
• You will find out at an early stage when certain knowledge is no longer needed.

From a strategic perspective, it is essential to combine these approaches of asserting which skills are needed and which skills have become unnecessary. This method allows you to train people whose skills will be less sought-after in the future to meet new demands in good time.

Besides good skills management, successful strategic capacity planning requires an enterprise-wide resource overview. The graphic below shows how a tool based on an enterprise-wide resource pool can support the dynamic assignment of skills and staff members to strategically valued projects.

Conclusion – Skills Management in Project Management

This article has taught you that skills management or competency management is a very advanced form of resource management. You are now familiar with the most important benefits from a strategic and tactical-operational point of view.

But it will not be easy to establish this approach. Reservations on the part of the staff members who fear disadvantages for themselves are very common. It is possible to alleviate these if the high effort for recording the skills is tied in with concepts for personnel development.

And you now know that you should focus on requesting skills rather than individual people. This allows the team leaders or resource managers to distribute the work more evenly among all suitable individuals.

Our final tips

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management. Download the eBook now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter to make sure you receive all our updates.

Is there anything you would like to add regarding skills management? What gives you a headache? We will be happy to respond to your comment below!

Der Beitrag Skills Management in Project Management: Definition, Benefits and Prerequisites erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

The following chapters are waiting for you:

• Is resource planning really that complicated?
• Why start with the team leaders?
• Resource planning implementation in 6 steps
  • Step 1: Promote the benefits
  • Step 2: Start by planning a first representative team
  • Step 3: Conduct the first planning session
  • Step 4: Introduce a coordination process with regular planning intervals
  • Step 5: Regular operations and optimizing team planning
  • Step 6: Implementing and optimizing project planning
• Conclusion – Resource planning implementation in 6 steps

Let us delve in.

Is Resource Planning Really That Complicated?

Project resource management is often regarded as complicated because:

• Project managers themselves often cannot plan exactly who will be required on the project at exactly what time
• The availability is often unforeseeable, especially when it comes to internal staff

In addition, it is often assumed that you can only allocate projects and activities properly if you have an overview of who is working on what, and when. Many believe you need sound project planning first of all, but this is not correct!

You can also start by implementing proper resource planning using the approach via the team leaders. And this does not have to be complicated, if you proceed as described below. In our experience, you could even reach your goal in around two months.

Why Start with the Team Leaders?

The figure below reveals the difference in implementation time between starting with the team leaders and starting with the project managers. You will reach your goal much faster with the overall planning of the resources by the team leaders. The detailed resource planning from the projects, albeit incomplete in total, takes considerably longer.

What is the reason for this striking difference? Among the most important causes are the following:

• When introducing project management, you will have to establish several processes and methods which are unnecessary for tactical resource management.
• The number of project managers tends to be higher than that of team leaders. Thus, their training will take longer to begin with. What is more, they must invest much more work into the detailed planning of their projects than team leaders into their overview.
• Projects have a start and a finish date. Team planning occurs without start and finish date month after month.
• It is not worth introducing a new system for projects that are almost completed. Hence, you transfer only long-running and new projects into the new system.

For these reasons, it will take many months to reach the desired situation. Eventually, you will get an overview of the resource utilization from the overall planning of many project managers. Yet even this overall planning will only include project activities. Operations and absences, which also reduce the capacity, are not taken into consideration.

Activities Outside of Projects Are Not Considered

This means that the resource utilization is still far from complete with the approach via the project managers. Yet, this is exactly what matters. For only a complete resource overview is useful. And this you can easily obtain from the team leaders.

You can start complete resource planning in your teams any time. Besides absences and operations, you should consider all projects at least roughly at the highest level.

Even without knowing the details at the level of tasks, you should be able to assign people to projects with a share of hours per month.

Our tip: A resource overview is only useful when it is complete. The team leaders can actually provide one easily. This is what you should begin with when implementing resource planning.

Team Leaders Should Know Their Team Members’ Responsibilities

As a rule, team leaders know what the members of their team are working on. At the very least, they know:

1. In which projects they are involved
2. When they are absent
3. What other responsibilities they have

They may not always know the details, but their knowledge of the employees’ activities is comprehensive.

Without an adequate overview, the team leader will not be able to explain the team’s workload. For instance, he or she will struggle to clarify why a new project request will not fit into the team’s current resource utilization. All the same, this tends to be one of the key reasons for implementing resource management in the first place.

To respond to questions of availability, team leaders do not need perfect and detailed planning. Chiefly, they require a complete overview of all resources and their respective activities. The team leader gains a lot by having more or less accurate answers to these questions. This is significantly better than a wrong answer.

It is a great but avoidable mistake to make commitments which cannot be kept. The usual reason is that activities were neglected when calculating the workload.

Apart from that, the team leaders’ planning almost always fluctuates except for vacation and a few regular meetings. After all, it is usually based on estimates.

The key difference lies in this: are you surprised that team members do not have time?

1. Is this because they are pursuing activities the team leaders are unacquainted with? That is bad. You will need to work on your team resource planning methods.
2. Or are known activities simply taking longer than assumed? This is easier to justify.

Only Complete Resource Planning is Useful

Therefore, the primary objective is not necessarily perfect resource planning. What you need is complete resource planning. Resource planning only begins to be useful once it is complete. The initial complete plan can be refined in further steps.

Later, you can mainly improve one thing: the regular and increasingly more specific coordination with the project managers. The rest lies in the team leaders’ responsibility anyway. And soon it will also be available in the right system.

Our tip: What you require first is complete, not perfect, resource planning. It only begins to be useful once it is complete. Missing details can be added later.

Resource Planning Implementation in 6 Steps

So much for the background. Now, you will learn how to approach resource planning implementation via the team leaders.

Step 1: Promote the Benefits

If you want to persuade the team leaders, you need to highlight the benefits of a central system for resource planning as follows:

• Decision-makers receive utilization overviews of all teams. As a rule, these are aggregated. Yet, the decision-makers have the option to “drill down” to every individual team. This provides them with all the necessary details to make informed decisions.
• Team leaders obtain valid utilization overviews. These enable them to achieve the best possible utilization of their team, without overload.
• Project managers obtain more reliable commitments regarding:
  • the availability of suitable resources (in matrix organizations)
  • delivery dates of results (in line organizations)

Do some marketing for the resource planning implementation! Get the affected people involved. But watch out: be aware that you are also creating a transparency some team leaders may not be comfortable with.

Another important point is to reach an agreement with the employee organization / works council at an early stage, as they might suspect the possibility of unjustified surveillance of the employees. However, this should not cause any real problems, since:

• The users of the planning data are the team leaders
• These are the direct supervisors; and, for the benefit of their employees, they can now plan a better utilization
• The aim is to avoid overload; less overplanning means less stress for the employees

Our tip: Turn affected people into proponents. Thus, they will support you in advocating the implementation of a solution for tactical resource planning. And be aware that not all team leaders will appreciate this new transparency.

Step 2: Start by Planning for a First Representative Team

If changes are due, consider first: what has worked well in which area so far? What have team leaders been planning to date? And with how much detail?

Find out the team resource planning methods and data that have been tried and tested and adopt them.

Look for Team Leaders as Proponents

Identify a known well-organized team. And make sure its team leader is willing to support your undertaking and team resource planning methods. You need a template that can be used by everyone. Ideally, you will not start by creating this template in Excel. Instead, use suitable team management software for team leaders. In this way, you point your colleagues in the right direction from the get-go.

Define the Granularity of Your Planning

Define the planning granularity in weeks or months. Planning in quarters tends to be too rough; days are usually too detailed. This mostly depends on the duration of tasks and the planning intervals.

Should you plan in hours, days or FTEs (Full Time Equivalents)? This is also determined by the scope of the tasks. It may be better to enter the number of days than several hundred hours.

Wondering how resource planning works? Find a few answers in our
Project Resource Management article.

On the other hand, hours are always without ambiguity. In the case of part-time employees, days can raise the question of how these are to be understood. FTEs are an attempt at bypassing this question. The concept needs to be explained all the same.

Record Activities and Assign Categories

• Define rows for absences. At best, these are vacation and other. As a rule, it is not permitted to enter illness. The employee organization / works council is particularly vigilant in this respect.
• Define rows for general operations per team that apply to most team members. These can be activities such as team meetings, further training, presales, support, etc. Maintain these rows in the team manager tool for all team members.
• Identify the individual operations of each team member. In contrast to the general operations, these can change over time. And they must not relate to deliverables within projects.
• Record all projects in which your team members are involved. Start with one row per project. You may not have any usable planning data from the projects. In such a case, begin by falling back on the team leader’s and the team members’ knowledge.

As repeatedly stated, mind the completeness of the activities more than the specificity. It is much more important to get an approximate overview of which projects are actually being worked on.

But it is problematic to plan individual tasks in detail for some projects while others are not considered at all. Simply because some details are missing.

The point is to record everything to begin with. Thus, you obtain a complete picture, albeit your first draft.

Our tip: Mind the completeness of the recorded activities more than the specificity of your planning. It is important to obtain a complete picture for a start. Otherwise, your planning will contain an unknown quantity of error. This is not conducive to reliable resource planning.

Based on this, you can establish coordination processes with the project managers. Thus, they stand on a better footing from the outset.

Involve the Project Managers Gradually

There is no need to involve all project managers at once. This can happen step by step. Some projects are about to be completed. Planning them in detail is not worth the effort. Others may only start in a few months. In both cases, rough planning is sufficient. This can be because detailed planning may not be worth pursuing:

1. yet
2. anymore

But one thing is always wrong: not to plan something only because it cannot be as specific as you would like it to be.

Involve Further Team Leaders and Optimize the System Together

Present the result to the other team leaders and integrate their feedback. After all, each person must:

1. Understand the structure
2. Accept the granularity of the planning

Step 3: Conduct the First Planning Session

Before defining the processes, ensure that the team leaders involved become familiar with:

1. The tool
2. The planning effort

Of course, you can also define the planning intervals first. And begin to populate the tool afterwards.

But in our experience, organizations tend to take on more than they can actually accomplish. That is why it often makes sense to let all team leaders gather experience with the initial planning for their team. Only then, do you define the intervals at which you update the planning.

A good tool for team planning must be a simple one. Normally, a team leader should not need to spend more than two hours per week on team planning.

But the initial planning is bound to take longer because the users must:

1. Familiarize themselves with the structures
2. Get to know the tool

In addition, various data will not be as readily available as hoped-for.

Good Support of the Team Leaders is Vital

Ensure that the team leaders have good support. Planning has to be a positive experience for them from the start. Some will require more support than others will.

It is vital to convince as many team leaders as possible in the first round. They need to recognize the benefits of working with their own real data.

Our tip: At all events, ensure good support for the team leaders in the first few weeks. For them, planning must be a positive, smooth experience without difficulties from the start. And never stop communicating the benefits of working with your own data.

Set Guidelines for Data Maintenance

Define steps to be completed when entering the data. The following entries are necessary:

• All team members and their capacities (ideally, the system will have been populated automatically for every team with the resources and their capacities; the data is derived from their work schedules)
• All project requests for team members (can possibly be imported from other systems)
• Absences and general operations (can possibly be imported from other systems)
• All projects at team level (can possibly be imported from other systems)
• Individual operations of all team members
• All project commitments for the coming e.g. 3 months

Choose Preliminary Intervals between Updates

Choose the update frequency that seems reasonable to you. Maybe, you start with a weekly interval. Thus, you might obtain an initial overview of all teams showing the current status consistently.

Naturally, it will include overload yet to be resolved. However, you can only work this out together and at the intervals you determine. Next, it is necessary to coordinate the planning intervals. All involved must be able to comply with them.

Step 4: Introduce a Coordination Process with Regular Planning Intervals

As mentioned above, we strongly advise you to introduce a regular process cycle at your company. And this has to be lived. For the requests from projects tend to change dynamically. But the team leaders cannot reschedule their team planning every day.

Therefore, it is necessary for the planning to be up to date by the due date. In the case of resource conflicts, all team leaders and project managers involved have the same current basis for decisions.

You should still get used to the fact that resource planning cannot always be 100 per cent specific. External interferences often come sooner than you can adjust your planning.

This is how you approach the introduction of regular planning intervals:

• Identify the parties involved in the process (project manager, team leader and the PMO).
• Come to an agreement with them as to which intervals are appropriate for resource coordination at your company. If in doubt, begin with longer intervals. This will allow you to actually perform the update.
• Ensure that the commitment of the resources is fixed for the current and the following interval. This is the only way to achieve consistent resource utilization.
• Assist the project managers in updating their project plans in line with the agreed intervals. You always need the total current resource requirements at once.
• Coordinate the use of resources with the team leaders based on the current project planning.
• Resolve resource conflicts project managers and team leaders cannot eliminate in a steering committee. This committee should be made up of the appropriate decision-makers.
• In a multi-project environment, top management will first have to define the priorities for this in the course of strategic resource planning (also known as capacity planning).

Interested in the strategic side of resource planning? Read about Capacity Planning.

The figure below shows such a process cycle across the levels of the roles involved.

Step 5: Regular Operations and Optimizing Team Planning

Run through the planning cycle a few times. Once it is more or less stable, you can start optimizing it. What is the situation at your company at this point in time?

• Have the promised benefits of the new resource planning materialized?
• Are team leaders, project managers and decision-makers working with better overviews?
• And can they use these as a basis for their decisions?
• Does everyone succeed in updating their plans on time?
• Are the coordination meetings successful?

The following results are likely:

1. In some areas your planning was perhaps too rough
2. In others it may have been unnecessarily detailed

The task at hand is to strike a balance between effort and benefit and optimize it. This can take several weeks or even months.

You could even implement some technical interfaces. These would enable you to synchronize data regarding capacities and absences automatically from HR systems. Or you may automate the interfaces between project planning and team planning using the appropriate integration middleware.

Step 6: Implementing and Optimizing Project Planning

Up to now, you have advanced resource planning on the team leaders’ side. This has allowed you to achieve a complete overview of the workload and availability of team members quickly. Now you need to advance the processes, methods and tools for project planning. The PMO is responsible for doing this.

If you are interested in this part you might want to download our free PMO Survey.

Resource Planning as a Problem for PMOs

And one final note: Our extensive PMO Survey 2020 came to an interesting conclusion based on the feedback from 330 companies. The lack of transparency in resource planning is one of the top 4 obstacles to greater PMO acceptance. The approach described above may be a good remedy for this.

Conclusion – Resource Planning Implementation in 6 Steps

In this article, you have learned how to approach resource planning implementation and that this can even be a fast process. Choose the approach via the team leaders. They already have a lot of current and important information that needs to be consolidated.

This assumes that you stick to the proposed “basic rules” when implementing resource management. Use the 6 steps described above as a guide to resource planning implementation.

However, always bear the following in mind: the goal is not perfect but complete resource planning. This will provide the basis to make it work for you, too.

Our final tips

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management. Download the eBook now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter to make sure you receive all our updates.

What has been your experience with resource planning implementation? Or is there anything you would like to add? Please leave a comment below.

Der Beitrag Resource Planning Implementation – How to Be Quick and Successful with 6 Clear Steps erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

In this article, you will learn about the requirements for resource planning tools in the project environment, depending on the role of the stakeholders involved. We will look at the challenges and how they can be met with suitable resource scheduling tools. We will cover the following topics:

• Roles involved in resource planning
• Characteristics of Excel solutions
• Decision-maker requirements for resource planning tools
• Project manager requirements for resource planning tools
• Team leader requirements for resource planning tools
• Involving team members
• Conclusion – Resource planning tools for the roles involved

Roles Involved in Resource Planning

The roles involved in the project environment and their duties and are roughly:

• Decision-maker – strategic planning and portfolio management
• Project manager – project planning and resource requirements
• Team leader – providing, and ensuring the availability of, the appropriate resources
• Team members – task planning and notification of completion
• PMO – coordination and quality assurance

Also interesting: Define project roles up-front with a role clarification workshop.

Trying to cover all these requirements with the project management tool will only deliver a very rough estimate of the resource utilization. After all, project management tools are designed with the project manager in mind. The PM tool does not take line activities or absences into account, and it does not provide the PMO or team members with the information they need for good planning.

So, the question is, what are the prerequisites for good planning? What requirements must they fulfill? How many different resource scheduling tools are needed? In the following article, you will find out more about which roles require special attention and the requirements of each role with regard to resource planning tools.

Characteristics of Excel Solutions

Up to a certain team size, planning in Excel for individual teams may make sense, even without additional programming.

But it tends to get complicated:

• with a large number of team members
• when planning for more than one team

Other departments may also depend on the structured transfer of data from the teams. This poses the next challenge.

Advantages of an Excel Solution:

• Likely to be already available at the company, hence no additional licensing costs
• Quick setup of simple overviews
• Graphical analysis as desired
• Easy to use for the most part – anyone can “do” Excel
• Often high acceptance to begin with
• Usable offline
• Printable
• Programmable

If your Excel planning is well structured in the teams, for example by consistently using the same resource planning template, this is an advantage. It can provide a good basis for a database-supported solution once your company has “outgrown” the Excel solution.

Disadvantages of an Excel Solution:

• Data in single files tend to give rise to versioning problems.
• Working with the same data, or rather sharing one file, is uncomfortable.
• The possibility to make changes complicates a standard process across teams.
• Individual adjustments in the table structure make it difficult to compare files.
• Solutions programmed in Excel can be kept up to date only with high effort.
• Consolidating teams in an overview is only possible if the tables of all teams are identical in structure.
• Due to the different structures, planning data can rarely be used beyond the teams.
• Data inquiry across teams is impossible.
• Access permissions are hard to enforce.

A central database-supported tool with an easy-to-use user interface would resolve the disadvantages mentioned above.

All the same, companies continue to work with an uncomfortable Excel solution and live with the disadvantages. This is because nobody at the company arranges for an alternative – a resource management tool that is truly suited to tactical resource planning by the team leaders.

Meanwhile, the market actually offers a wide variety of team resource management tools for team leaders.

Decision-Maker Requirements for Resource Planning Tools

Decision-makers must prioritize initiatives and projects based on the strategic plans. They are expected to launch the right projects and ensure that a sufficient number of the right people are available in the medium and long term to carry out these projects.

To accomplish this, they need:

• A good overview of all the current and new projects as well as the existing teams and their skills and available capacities.
• To develop possible scenarios for handling any possible project delays in a way that ensures the long-term optimal use of the resources based on the teams and their skills.
• The ability to search across sites, and even internationally, to find suitable people and teams for new projects.

The resource tool must be able to depict the portfolio and its capacity utilization:

• What expertise and skills does the project require?
• What expertise and skills are available at which sites, and which ones are missing?
• Which projects can be launched, and when?
• Which ongoing projects can (or must) be postponed?
• Which projects are missing the necessary expertise and skills?
• For which areas must staff with specific skills be hired, trained or reassigned, etc.?

Learn more: Project Resource Management – Basics and Areas for Beginners

The ongoing and new projects are differentiated by color in a bar chart and the histograms. It must be possible to simply shift the bars representing the projects and thereby adjust the resource “peaks” to eliminate any significant overloads.

Users must be able to:

• Easily activate or deactivate a project
• Adjust the resource capacities
• Group resources by criteria such as skill set, site, team, project group, etc.
• Perform simulation tests and save the results of various possible scenarios

The problem:

Missing tool functionality: Many companies attempt to solve this problem using MS Excel. However, they fail due to the lack of reliable data as well as limitations in the way the data is depicted, such as the inability to simply group the resources or postpone a project.

Focus on planning details: It is impossible to perfectly plan all upcoming projects down to the last detail because of the uncertainty whether the project will ever actually be launched. In these cases, it is sufficient that their resource planning for multiple projects is “rough, but complete.” For long-term planning, one row per project and skill is generally enough, using months as the basis.

Our tip: A rule of thumb in good planning for project portfolio management is that it is better for these plans to be rough but complete than detailed and incomplete.

The project manager can supply data from current projects, but planning estimates for new projects must be obtained from the sales team and / or product manager. It is important to also take into account the normal daily obligations and absences that have been planned by team leaders as well.

A good resource scheduling tool accepts input from a variety of other systems and allows missing or new information to be added to existing scenarios later or entered manually. This information does not have to be very detailed, but it must accurately reflect the situation.

Further reading: PMO Tools for Successful Multi-Project Management

Advantages over Excel

• Easy ad-hoc optimization of resource utilization by mouse click
• Graphical simulation of the current state of projects and immediate view of the impact on the resources involved
• Summary of all the project data in one easy-to-read diagram

This way for more information on portfolio management software TPG CoReSuite.

Project Manager Requirements for Resource Planning Tools

Project managers are expected to deliver results, and this requires having the right people in the respective teams within the company. Using their project plans as a guide, they submit requests to the team leaders and then expect a firm commitment with regard to the resources.

The challenge here:

• If the project involves several hundred processes, the resource planning can quickly become extraordinarily complex.
• Many processes do not require these resources 100 percent of the time, but rather just a few hours now and then. This can be quite time-consuming to track.
• Many processes are difficult to plan precisely.

This means: When it comes to resource requirements, project managers can just provide estimates. Does this mean that more detail is needed? Preparing detailed estimates always requires investing more time and effort, and both are not always available. In our experience, detailed planning is not even necessary because the approach “rough, but complete” is the better strategy, also for the project managers.

Our tip: Plan your resources as work packages and phases on a weekly or monthly basis instead of tracking such minutiae as individual processes and days.

After all, as a project manager, you must coordinate the resource availability with team leaders for individual projects on a weekly or monthly basis. Resource management tools will help you determine:

• Which teams have which qualifications
• Which team can provide people (and how many) with the necessary qualifications
• Which teams can take responsibility for which work packages
• Why a particular person can no longer devote their time to your project
• Who is handling this person’s duties while they are on vacation
• How the team’s commitments can be balanced with the current project plans
• How the team’s commitments have changed
• What happens if the project is postponed

The project manager’s tools must cover the entire process.

• Request: The project manager broadly plans the resources on various levels by allocating the teams or skills.
• Commitment: The team leader commits specific people to the project manager’s plans.
• Further specification: In the plan, the project manager replaces the generic teams or skills with the names of the people committed by the team leader.

Project managers need the ability to align the people promised by the team leaders with their latest project plan. This lets them see if their plan can be implemented with the available resources.

Team Leader Requirements for Resource Planning Tools

Team leaders act as a liaison between their supervisor and the project managers. In addition, they also serve as a leader to the team members.

Traditional team management: Together with their team, their job is to handle as many line duties and projects as possible. The goal is to get as much work out of the team as possible without overwhelming the team members.

Collaboration with stakeholders: Team leaders must always be ready to provide up-to-date information to the decision-makers, project managers and the team itself. This information relates to the team’s activities and that of individual team members as well.

Having a suitable and well-designed tool enables team leaders to quickly and reliably plan, present and provide the information needed to show:

• The team’s capacities and availability
• The expertise and skills of the team members
• The team’s current projects
• The amount of time that has been allocated for team meetings and other general line activities
• The team’s responsibilities with regard to the general activities and how these are organized
• When each person can take a vacation and who will handle their duties while they are gone
• How much, and what type of, additional training the team is receiving
• The team’s capacity for the next 6, 12 or 18 months
• Whether the team is expected to take on additional new or existing responsibilities
• Which team members need help acquiring the necessary team expertise
• Who needs additional training so that the team’s duties can be better distributed among its members
• What additional training is needed, and when, to be ready for upcoming assignments
• Who is available to participate in new projects

Team leaders need a good tool designed specifically to provide this information. They can enter information about absences and line activities into the tool and import the requirements from different projects. They need this to have a complete overview of their team’s available capacities. A simple traffic light symbol is needed to easily detect any overutilization or underutilization.

If there are resource requests for other projects, the tool should ideally allow these requests to be committed and added to the individual projects. In addition to the capacity utilization indicator, there should also be an indicator (again using traffic light colors) to show the relationship between the resource requests and commitments for each project. Having this information facilitates targeted discussions regarding the optimum use of the available resources within the various projects.

Team leaders generally do not like using project planning tools because their duties do not involve scheduling processes and milestones or depicting the dependencies between selected processes. Rather, their job as resource planners is to organize the absences and operations within specific time frames.

Many team leaders therefore use MS Excel for this because it is simple yet gives them the overview they need.

The problems with Excel are, however: it does not let you:

• import data from a project management system
• generate an overview
• retrieve data or make it available to others.

It would therefore be better to use a team resource management tool that is equally easy to use yet stores this information in a database. This would enable team leaders to:

• Make their plans available for incorporation into the portfolio overview
• Import the project plans in the form of requests
• Import commitments to the requests
• Immediately recognize which projects have been postponed

Team leaders now always have a complete overview based on their own data, giving them the information they need for discussions with project managers.

Find out more about TPG CoReSuite Team Manager, the optimal resource planner tool for team leaders.

Involving Team Members

We have lately noticed that the traditional comprehensive form of planning, in which all the details are included in a single plan, is no longer the best strategy. With the agile, iterative planning so prevalent today, the trend is to use rough project plans combined with detailed task lists.

In this scenario, the project manager defines the project structure, its phases and milestones. At the lowest level are the work packages or sprints and iterations. Concurrently, the team members prepare the task lists with detailed information about the individual work packages and / or iterations. This is normally not done using the project manager’s tool, but rather using their own work management tools.

What exactly does this mean?

The project manager develops the project framework, and the team members provide the actual input. Thereby, a well-organized project plan is created, one with maybe a hundred lines instead of a thousand.

The advantages:

• A leaner project plan provides a clear, usable overview of the planned deadlines and resources.
• Combining the rough project plan with the team member task lists results in a detailed plan with much more reliable estimates.
• This combined plan is much easier to manage than the project plan alone.

So how are the project plans and task plans synchronized? Appropriate integration middleware solutions like TPG PSLink enable you to exchange and synchronize data and data structures between different systems automatically:

• The deadlines listed in the project plan’s work packages are imported into the work planning system.
• The resources required for the associated tasks need to be linked to the corresponding work packages in the project plans.
• Information regarding the volume of tasks having the status open / in progress / waiting / done is very important to the project managers and must be re-synchronized with the other systems.

The benefits of combining the tools

With a suitable synchronization method:

• Team members can plan more accurately
• Project managers simplify their resource planning
• People in both roles use the best resource tools for their needs without needless data duplication.

Conclusion – Resource Planning Tools for the Roles Involved

The growing competition for resources within companies has led to a paradigm shift in the field of project management. As you now know, the use of project plans for the planning of resources is increasingly being replaced by a combined plan involving the project (rough planning) and team (detailed planning). Because:

• Having rough estimates in the project plan simplifies the control and monitoring.
• The detailed plans provided by the team provide a more realistic view of the resources necessary and their availability.
• This means that the team leaders and their teams are critical to effective resource management. Using effective resource planning tools gives the team leaders all the control and information tools necessary to get the job done.
• This gives decision-makers and PMOs the accurate information they need to make good decisions with regard to coordination and strategic planning (such as project portfolio management).

You have now read about several of the resource management tools available to help the stakeholders best meet the demands made on them and also integrate the diverse systems:

• Decision-makers (project portfolio management): Simulation, overview and optimization of the resource utilization are available with a few clicks in the TPG CoReSuite Portfolio Manager.
• Project manager (project planning / resource requirements): Planning the processes for handling requests and commitments is done using TPG CoReSuite Project Manager.
• Team leader (information / commitment of resources): Information is presented for the portfolio overview and the requested resources are committed using TPG CoReSuite Team Manager.
• Team members (task planning and notification of completion): Detailed plans derived from the task management tools are integrated with the project’s rough planning using the middleware TPG PSLink.

Our final tips:

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management (PPM). Download the free eBook “The PPM Paradise” now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter with information on more hands-on articles, eBooks, etc. to improve your project management maturity level.

What has been your experience with resource planning tools? Let us know in the comment field below. We look forward to hearing from you.

Der Beitrag Requirements for Resource Planning Tools for the Individual Roles in the Project Environment erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

You will learn how to approach agile resource planning in the following chapters:

• Relevance and satisfaction are poles apart
• Fixed teams – The basis of realistic planning and high quality
• Fewer resource conflicts thanks to open-ended results
• Agile resource planning calls for optimizing the organization
• An example of successful agile resource planning
• Long-term resource planning / capacity planning is a must
• Agile resource planning – The cadence is essential
• Conclusion – Agile resource planning

Relevance and Satisfaction Are Poles Apart

Resource management has many areas and is handled differently from company to company. Yet, what unites all companies is the high relevance of the resource topic.

Times have changed after all: many companies are short of staff with the required qualifications. As a result, too few qualified people have to attend to too many tasks. Whether it be operations or project activities – there is always more to do than can be accomplished.

And another thing: in most companies, the importance of the resource topic is contrasted by high discontent with the management of resource conflicts.

In our perception, this is true of all industries and company sizes.

This is where project management is meant to help, for instance by means of detailed work planning. The goal is to optimize the utilization of staff, which would hopefully make it possible to deliver the desired results on time – naturally in accordance with cost and quality goals.

Resource Management Is Not a By-Product of Project Management

Yet, the projects meeting these standards are very few. Here are some examples from everyday project work to demonstrate this:

• Deadlines are impossible to meet due to insufficient resource provision.
• With too few qualified colleagues, project budgets are overrun, as the quality is inadequate.
• The coordination effort for resolving resource conflicts is much too high, and the results are often no more than rotten compromises.
• In the end, new business opportunities cannot be seized, and existing customers are annoyed.

This can have several reasons, such as for instance:

• Workload diagrams that simply do not add up.
• The resource pool is not structured properly, and its maintenance is incomplete.
• Resource requests from projects are never complete, nor are they planned well enough.
• Employees have to carry out too many tasks at once.
• There are no established coordination processes – neither for resource requests nor for cases of conflict.
• Often, there is no prioritization of projects, or it is not common knowledge.
• Due to unsuitable tools, team leaders and project managers do not have their own planning statuses that would enable a well-founded discussion of the respective situation.

Even if the management of individual projects is well established at your company, this will only partly help with resource management in a multi-project environment.

Well-planned individual projects do provide a very good basis for resource requirements. The valid allocation of resources, however, requires overriding processes and methods as well as a central tool with a database.

What you will need above all:

• An appropriate organization
• The involvement of the team leaders
• Prioritization

Just Demanding More and More Will Not Work

At the same time, a little logic and common sense is also necessary: superiors cannot ask more and more of people who are already working to capacity. It is a matter of scoring something off the task list once in a while!

Sounds logical somehow. Yet, accepting this is not always easy when you have the new order, the next delivery date or end-of-the-month billing in mind and commitments to keep.

Let me take you on a mental journey:

You are sitting on a full bus. It pulls up at a stop, and other people want to board. Is that still possible? Let us be honest: if the bus is full, someone will have to get off so that another can get on and sit properly. Experience has shown that another person will always fit into a full bus – standing up, squashed against a door. But how long will they be able to take it?

And let us hope the door will hold out until the next stop at least. That is where you will have to change to another bus anyway. But you do not actually know where it stops exactly, and it is also known to arrive late. Soon you may be getting off the bus network for good anyway – that is you may be leaving the company by your own choice.

Our tip: Rather than overloading your team with evermore tasks – prioritize those tasks and score less important items (temporarily) off the list.

Fixed Teams – The Basis of Realistic Planning and High Quality

With agile methods – to stay with our metaphor – employees will not constantly have to take different crowded buses to destinations dictated by others. Together, they get on a bus which has a seat for everyone. Nobody gets on or off – it is a charter bus, only for one project or product. The tour guide is well known as is the destination route.

Together with the tour guide, the team determines how far to go, where to exactly, and also how fast, depending on the experiences they encounter along the road. This takes us to the marginal conditions you will have to deal with if you want to travel in this nice way.

Clearly, the journey is not the reward in the agile world either. It is just that the route and the destination do not have to be completely set from the beginning. However, what will be fixed from the outset is the size of the bus and the amount of fuel.

Moreover, the customer is always on board too, and we always ask him at intermediate stops how he or she likes it. And they are OK with being taken to a destination they may not have known well before.

What this process means for the resource management topic in practice: the majority of problems cannot arise, as the right course is set from the beginning.

Our tip: Bank on a fixed team, i.e. one that is put together only once, rather than on a constant change of staff members between the different projects.

Yet, it can only be that easy if you accept the following points:

All agree that the assembled team will aim to achieve the best possible working result within the allowed time. However, this does not have to be specified in every detail beforehand.

• The team itself estimates the effort for the tasks and therefore knows best what can be accomplished in what time. This means the team is not overextended from the outside.
• Reviews (e.g. bi-weekly) will give all participants an insight into the results hitherto obtained. This gives everyone the reassurance to be doing the right thing. Adjustments can be made in good time.
• Everyone is aware that the final outcome may vary from the original requirement. However, it needs to provide a usable benefit.

Fewer Resource Conflicts Thanks to Open-Ended Results

The process described above ensures that your workload diagrams are always correct and the costs are predictable.

The finish date is set though the result at this time is not. Thus, you trade resource conflicts for open-ended results.

Still, the quality is higher, as everyone has been focused on working on one project or product up to this point.

If anyone has to change teams, this should not happen right in the middle. This change takes place between Sprints or iterations, just as it is propagated in the other teams. This makes changing to another bus much easier.

You may be thinking now that this is all very well for the development of software products. But upon opening your eyes after this mental journey your reality tells you that this cannot work in your case.

Wondering about which approach to use? Read article about agile, traditional or hybrid PM.

It is true that you will not be able to build an airport in this way. Yet, there are many other sectors, which are not mere software development, in which you can use agile methods at least for the software component. Software is also omnipresent in all the digitization projects. In addition, any other form of product development can follow agile principles with a fixed team.

Agile Resource Planning Calls for Optimizing the Organization

Please note: prerequisites for agile methods to work are:

• The clear availability of the team members.
• Their own estimation regarding the feasibility of the requested deliverables.

Both are fundamental conditions of the agile world, which you can also apply in traditional project management to a large extent. However, not only one project manager but the whole organization must be behind this.

Another approach for this is hybrid project management. This means using agile methods for product development and traditional methods for customer projects. In this way, you could streamline a third to half of your resource management, provided the teams are kept clearly separated.

You could also consider following agile methods only in the specification phase of a project. After five Sprints, everyone is much clearer on the goal and the feasibility. The same goes for the integration of traditionally developed components at the end of a project. If they need to be delivered in working order, you can also employ agile methods for half a year.

An Example of Successful Agile Resource Planning

At TPG The Project Group, we have been developing software products with agile resource planning and agile methods for the last ten years. For customer projects, on the other hand, we use traditional methods and work in a matrix organization. Internally, both follow the same cadence of two weeks.

Team members stopped switching between customer projects and product development a long time ago.

At TPG, we take great care to come and meet all stakeholders, keep them informed and involve them in the prioritization of the features.

We deliver releases of our products every two months. In release planning, product management makes suggestions of what could go into the next release. The suggestions are based on the points the development team estimated for the effort. These points must match the available capacity.

Due to the fixed team size, the capacity only changes if new employees are hired or if someone is on holiday or unavailable due to sickness.

We include team meetings, training, etc. as visible activities in planning to achieve full transparency. All participants can see:

• The amount of time or points available in the following two months.
• How much time or points the team has realistically allocated for what feature.

Development, consulting and sales have a say in determining the coming features; product management has the power of veto, at least on paper.

The release planning meeting ends once a generally accepted decision has been made. With a bit of mental arithmetic, everyone is also entitled to ask for more, but this is on the condition that they state what they can forego.

At our company, a release-planning meeting usually takes from 2pm to 5pm (every two months with five to ten participants per product group). However, there is a buffer entitled open end in the calendar immediately after the meeting. Yet, in all these years, the buffer has been used only once – funnily enough at a meeting before which everyone thought that everything was clear anyway and we would not even take an hour.

Of course, changes in the tasks during development are only permitted if a catastrophe occurs.

Our tip: To achieve an understanding of the priorities, it is important to conduct release planning together in the team. A small inviolable buffer for the unforeseen has proved to be beneficial. If you do not need it, your team can simply select the next points from the prioritized task list in the last Sprint.

Long-Term Resource Planning / Capacity Planning is a Must

As mentioned at the beginning of this article: the management of resources has different areas.

We have looked at the core of short to mid-term resource planning including the particularities of the agile point of view.

Yet, the long-term shell will always stay the same for agile, traditional and hybrid approaches. Capacity planning according to corporate strategy is indispensable for both worlds.

What this means for product development: with each new product, a new team is put together; or it is disbanded if the product is not developed further.

Of course, you can also develop more than one product in a team, provided the Product Owner is the same. After all, someone must set the priorities.

For long-term resource planning, you need a strategy provided by top management and an established project management office (PMO) controlling the project portfolio for implementing the strategy.

This includes the necessary means such as:

• Standardized methods
• Established processes
• Support of project managers and team leaders with training and coaching
• A role-based tool with a central database

Ever wondered if and how a PMO can be agile, too? Read this insightful article.

Agile Resource Planning – The Cadence Is Essential

In our view, adhering to the cadence in collaboration is the most important factor in avoiding resource conflicts.

By this, we are stressing the importance of dealing properly with one another, even if it can get critical at times. Likewise, the synchronized cadence of planning, coordination and decision-making across all projects and resources is important.

Conclusion – Agile Resource Planning

Below, we list the essential points for avoiding resource conflicts in project management once again below – regardless of the discussion of whether to employ traditional or agile methods or both.

• Project resource management must be complete, or it is unserviceable. Rather include all projects with a rough estimate than only a few projects in detail.
• Whoever aims to implement more projects than is possible in terms of resources has to state beforehand what they are willing to forego. In the end, less is usually more.
• Allow the team to make their own estimates. This will make planning realistic.
• Try to keep the make-up of the teams as constant as possible. Every change is a loss.
• Be accurate in planning the basic load; otherwise, you will always assume incorrect availabilities. To achieve this, you need to involve the team leaders successfully in planning.
• Work with a PMO in the same cadence across all teams. This will reduce conflicts between agile resource planning and traditional projects.

Depending on company culture, resource management can be a delicate issue or not. The selection of methods, processes and tools plays an important part in this.

In the end, only those involved can establish satisfaction with this topic.

Our final tips:

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management (PPM). Download the free eBook “The PPM Paradise” now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter with information on more hands-on articles, eBooks, etc. to improve your project management maturity level.

What are the main pain points of resource coordination at your company, and could they be remedied with agile resource planning? We look forward to receiving your comment below.

Der Beitrag Agile Resource Planning – Can Agile Planning Reduce Resource Conflicts in Projects? erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

This article will outline the specific requirements matrix and line organizations place on the resource management process and how to define the right planning cycle that suits your form of organization. You will learn more about the following topics:

• Requirements for the coordination process between project and line managers
• The solution: a suitable planning cycle
• The resource planning process in the line organization
• The resource planning process in the matrix organization
• Conclusion – Resource planning process

Let us begin!

Note: By tactical resource planning, we mean the coordination between project and line managers. This is dependent on the company’s form of organization (matrix or line). The goal is to meet the project resource requirements by providing the necessary skills in a timely manner using the line staff. This tends to be the team leaders’ responsibility.

What is Project Resource Planning?

Definition: Resource planning in project management – aka project resource management – is a key element of project management. It ensures that a project has access to the necessary resources (staff, facilities, etc.) at all times. This planning is very closely related to the development of schedules and budgets.

Resource planning is an important part of project management because:

• Project resource management helps a company reach its targets by focusing on optimization and efficiency.
• The goal of every company is to achieve its objectives with as little effort as possible.
• Knowing what you need for the project to be successful lets you plan effectively and make economic use of the available resources. Larger companies often have a resource manager specifically for this purpose. This person relieves project managers of tasks such as organizing the necessary resources for already planned projects from the team leaders involved.

What is the resource planning process?

Resource planning process refers to the workflow used for resource management and includes the process cycle, the arrangements for coordination between project and line managers and the use of tools for this purpose.

Requirements for the Coordination Process between Project and Line Managers

Project managers need the resource commitments from the line managers as fast as possible because they need these commitments to plan their projects. Naturally, these commitments should still be truly reliable. How can this be achieved?

Given these constraints, the challenges for team leaders are:

• Multiple project managers will send repeated requests to the same team leaders at different times
• This hinders the team leaders from having a stable basis for their decisions
• Yesterday’s carefully coordinated plans may be obsolete today already due to a new incoming request
• Team members are often assigned responsibilities outside of projects. This affects productivity in the projects.

The Solution: A Suitable Planning Cycle

The key to success for the resource planning process is to agree on a planning cycle. This can greatly help facilitate the resource planning process.

The length and duration of the cycle should be aligned with the lifespan of projects at your company. The organizational effort for planning and coordination needs to remain within reasonable limits over the long term.

Here is what matters:

• The longer the cycle, the more stable the system
• Too long also means too rigid
• Cycles between one and four weeks are customary and useful

We recommend starting with a monthly cycle. This will ensure acceptance without overwhelming the organization. Only shorten the cycle once the system works and if the dynamics require it.

Our tip: Start with a monthly planning cycle. This will ensure acceptance without overwhelming the organization. Shorten the cycle to 2-3 weeks once you know that the system works and if the dynamics require it.

What to Consider for the Resource Planning Process

Get everyone involved to agree that PM resource plans for the current and the upcoming cycle can only be changed under exceptional circumstances. The use of resources should only be rescheduled for subsequent cycles.

This will save the company a lot of coordination effort because you will not have to deal with constant changes. Instead, rescheduling only happens at fixed intervals.

Another interesting read: Resource Management in Project Management

This approach requires all the participants to work harder at coordination. Ad-hoc changes only happen as a last resort. The implementation efficiency will be promoted because all staff members can work without interference for a longer period of time.

The figure below shows this type of process cycle at the levels of the roles involved.

Here is a practical example (see graphic above):

1. First, the team members must submit their time tracking reports by Friday.
2. The project managers must accept these by Monday night and reschedule the resulting remaining effort.
3. This may result in resource conflicts that only become apparent on Tuesday after all project managers have updated their plans (red square).
4. The team leaders have until Tuesday night or Wednesday (red circle) to resolve any conflicts. It is essential that the priorities are aligned with the strategy. Remember that those involved need to understand the strategy so that it can be considered here.
5. Finally – depending on the PMO (Project Management Office) competencies – there will be a meeting with a steering group / top management in which the resolutions are passed for all remaining decisions resulting from conflicts.

According to our PMO Survey, more than 50% of the PMOs questioned are already involved in “Resource allocation and conflict resolution” or are planning to establish this PMO function in the near future, see figure below. Resource management is also among the PMO responsibilities the respondents desire to expand in the future.

Our tip: Get everyone involved to agree that project resource management for the current and the upcoming cycles can be changed solely under exceptional circumstances. The use of resources can only be rescheduled for subsequent cycles.

Below, you will find out how the process of resource planning differs between line and matrix organizations.

The Resource Planning Process in the Line Organization

In the line organization, the negotiations are not about people but rather the deadlines for deliverables. The project managers plan which deliverables they need by what date. They forward these requirements to the team leaders.

The detailed planning is done by the line managers. The project manager is not involved in resource planning at the level of individual staff members.

Project managers in the line organization are mainly involved in coordinating the scheduling of projects and sub-projects or work packages. Resource coordination takes place within line departments / teams. The team leader is responsible for this.

In this environment, stable process cycles and traditional PM tools enable multiple projects to be managed transparently and can produce very good results.

In a line organization, team leaders can also use PM tools. These help them create detailed plans involving factors such as tasks and times (including absences) for their team as shown in the figure below.

In addition to project tasks, it is also possible to manage the team’s operations using the project plan. This means that the team leader only has to maintain one plan because it also includes all the team’s tasks:

• Project-related tasks
• Absences
• General operations
• Individual operations

The Coordination Process in the Line Organization

The coordination process in a line organization looks roughly like this:

1. The project managers plan approximate work packages – without the details or resources but with the planned efforts / budgets.
2. The project managers forward their rough plans / milestones to the team leaders.
3. The team leaders integrate these rough plans / milestones into their own plans.
4. The team leaders break down the work packages into individual tasks in their own planning. Next, they assign these tasks either only to people in their own team or also to external resources.
5. The team leaders’ planning can be checked against the project managers’ at the level of work packages with regard to scheduling and efforts (see yellow bar on the left in the figure above).
6. The variances are visible on both sides. The project manager and the team leader need to discuss these variances to coordinate and eliminate them.

It is vital that the project manager and team leader each use their own planning. In a separate step, the two plans are checked against each other.

Our tip: Make sure that the people in these roles are not able to change each other’s data! Protecting the autonomy of each person’s data enables project managers and team leaders to plan independently. Nonetheless, there should be a technical link between the team leader’s and the project manager’s plans to enable the sharing of data. This can be used to coordinate the use of resources.

The Resource Planning Process in the Matrix Organization

The matrix organization is a different thing altogether. Traditionally, project managers plan their projects with detailed tasks. They then assign these tasks to people or skills (generic resources).

The team leaders or the respective teams are the ones who decide which people are committed to them and to what extent. The team leaders must consider all the requests from different project managers, as well as the absences and operations, to explore the possible commitments.

However, it usually makes little sense to make these commitments at the individual task level. As a rule, team leaders do not need to know which exact tasks have been assigned to their team members. They are more concerned with which team member is working on what projects – and when. For this, it is enough to have the project managers coordinate this at the project level.

Considering resource planning implementation? Here is how to do it fast and well.

Team leaders in a matrix organization have the undesirable task of handling commitments of the required resources for different projects.

In most cases, traditional project management tools are inadequate for handling this. Why is this? Because the team leaders’ commitments are not maintained as an individual data pool. They are normally only marked with the status of the project or task.

The inherent problem: Postponements can occur in a project. If this happens, the staff commitments (which are only assigned a status) are simply postponed along with the tasks. However, team leaders only commit staff resources for designated periods of time.

This is logical because these same resources also need to work on other projects. For this reason, postponements usually result in resource conflicts, which spark new discussions (and require additional coordination).

For the coordination, the project manager and team leader need to maintain their own planning data at the project level. These need to be compared (see figure below).

If there is only the project managers’ plan, the team leaders are completely “at the project managers’ mercy”, at least in terms of the data. They can suggest ways to resolve the conflicts, but this will not change the project managers’ plans.

Neither can they negotiate with all project managers at once.

To be able to make commitments to the projects, team leaders need to first plan the absences and operations. They can only determine the real availability of a team member for the project on this basis.

Our tip: A resource management tool created especially for team leaders and supporting all requirements for successful resource coordination between project and line management in the matrix organization is the optimal support for this case.

The Coordination Process in the Matrix Organization

This is what the project resource management process in the matrix organization looks like:

1. The project managers plan their projects in detail at the task level.
2. The project managers assign either people or skills to the tasks.
3. The team leaders determine the project availability of their team members from capacity minus absences and operations.
4. The team leaders analyze the resource requests from the different projects. They commit their team members for available periods of time.
5. The project managers incorporate these commitments (as time frames) at the project level. Within these time frames, the project managers have flexibility in planning the tasks.
6. By comparing both roles’ planning, variances become visible. This provides a good basis for direct discussions to coordinate the efforts.

Our tip: Ensure team leaders in a matrix organization have their own planning in which they also manage absences and operations. This enables an accurate evaluation of the availability and gives project managers the confidence to rely on the resource commitments.

Conclusion – Resource Planning Process

This article has described the resource planning process in project management. It has also shown how the processes are shaped by the organizational structure. You are now familiar with the coordination processes for line and matrix organizations.

For both forms of organizational structure, make sure that you establish adequate process cycles. Your team leaders cannot respond to resource requests for the coming week several times a day. You need to gather requests for the cycle after next, as well as the subsequent cycles, over the period of the current cycle. Responses to the requests are only required by the due date.

Ensure that the commitments for the current cycle remain as stable as possible. Changes should only be permitted under exceptional circumstances. This approach makes resource coordination reliable for all involved.

Our final tips:

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management (PPM). Download the free eBook “The PPM Paradise” now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter with information on more hands-on articles, eBooks, etc. to improve your project management maturity level.

Have you been involved in establishing a resource planning process? Do you agree on the importance of stable process cycles? Please leave a comment below.

Der Beitrag Solutions for the Resource Planning Process in Line and Matrix Organizations (Practical Tips) erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.

Those responsible are expected to provide the staff needed to handle the project. However, there are generally not enough staff available with the necessary qualifications for the specified time period.

The team leaders and / or supervisors of these employees complain that they are constantly being confronted with new demands from operations and the projects. Handling both areas – operations and project work – is the challenge facing team leaders and their resources.

In this article, you will learn about:

• Challenges of strategic resource planning / capacity planning
• Challenges of tactical resource planning: coordination between project / operations
• Challenges of operational resource planning / work management
• Results for project management resource planning from the PMO Survey 2020
• Conclusion

Challenges of Strategic Resource Planning / Capacity Planning

The goal of strategic resource planning in project management or capacity planning is to ensure optimum resource utilization based on the company’s goals and the product portfolio. It should also:

• Identify what resources, and how many of these resources, are needed for upcoming projects and general operations
• Identify what resources must be procured and what competencies are missing

How flexible your resource plans are will depend on the types of projects your company pursues. Prioritizing these projects as part of the project portfolio management is a key objective.

There are three types of projects:

• In-house developments
• Commissioned projects
• Organizational projects

How do these three project types differ in priority and what effect does this have on the required resources?

• Prioritization of in-house developments
  With a portfolio of in-house development projects, you have a good starting point. The decision-makers themselves can decide when to launch a particular project. They can generally shape their own resource peaks. So, it is their responsibility to make rational, comprehensible decisions when prioritizing the projects.
• Prioritization of commissioned projects
  Clients can request, cancel, or approve a commissioned project at any time without prior warning. You are expected to deal with vague forecasts. Each client thinks they are king. If you are responsible for a sales pipeline like that, you will need to learn how to deal with uncertainty. You will need to keep an eye on the order levels when scheduling your resources.
• Prioritization of company projects
  Internal, company projects should be treated the same as any client project. One advantage here is that fewer people are involved in setting the priorities. On the other hand, these internal projects tend to be the first ones to be postponed when resources are scarce.

Our tip: Determine early on which of these three project types you are dealing with. Doing so will help you understand which of the typical challengesof project management resource planning you will face in managing your project.

Challenges of Tactical Resource Planning: Coordination between Project / Operations

Team leaders generally have the final word when it comes to allocation of the necessary project resources. Project managers expect team leaders to approve their resource requests as quickly as possible. This enables you to schedule these people for your projects. However, you also need reassurance that these approved resources will then actually be available when you need them. This helps minimize any changes to the plans later.

However, this can cause problems for the team leaders.

• The same team leader can be repeatedly confronted with requests from various project managers at different times.
• This makes it difficult for team leaders to have a sound basis on which to base their decisions.
• A new request today can negate an agreement made yesterday.
• Team members are often assigned tasks (such as operational tasks) in addition to their project work – which, in turn, affects productivity in the project.

Team leaders often deal with several project managers simultaneously. Project-related requests submitted to the team leaders must always be well-organized. Agreed upon, reliable processes and a fixed cadence for resource approval is essential for everyone involved.

Our tip: Get everyone involved to agree on a fixed schedule for project management resource planning. However, agree that in an emergency this schedule can be modified. This provides reliability and provides a better overview of the capacity utilization for the next 1-2 cycles.

Suggested related article: Best Practices for Establishing Resource Planning Processes

Challenges of Operational Resource Planning / Work Management

Project managers usually need the responsible team leaders to approve their requests for qualified employees. This was discussed in the previous chapter. The next issue is work management – who does what, and when?

In the matrix organization, the project manager has access to the allocated resources for the specified time period. The next step is for them to plan the required tasks – or, even better – have the team members plan these themselves.

In this case, the challenge is to regularly document the current status. This enables you, as the project manager, to clearly see what progress has been made and what still needs to be done. You need the right tools to do this. For this, you may want to consider an Atlassian Jira training.

Our tip: Create an IT environment in which the project manager’s scheduling tools and the team leader’s work management tools are integrated. This gives you the ability to easily compare the plans and the current status before any upcoming status meeting. For instance, powerful integration middleware will provide the option to exchange data between different systems.

Results for Project Management Resource Planning from the PMO Survey 2020

The extensive PMO Survey 2020 investigated the most important areas of responsibility in 330 companies with PMO. In the participating companies, resource management is the least established area of responsibility compared to the other PMO functions.

According to the results of the survey, PMOs with fewer than 3 members are in a decidedly worse position for resource management than PMOs with more members. The number of responses stating “Improvements are planned” is only slightly higher for PMOs with more members. However, the share of responses stating resource management was “Well-established” are at least three to four times as high.

Skills management and strategic capacity planning are the areas with particularly high challenges for project management resource planning. According to the survey, they are the least established. Yet, this is exactly where the differences between top, high and low performers are most marked. The first two are in a much better position when it comes to skills management and strategic capacity planning than the low performers.

Conclusion: Project Management Resource Planning – The Challenges

This article has introduced you to the challenges faced by the three levels of project management resource planning:

1. Strategic capacity planning
2. Tactical resource coordination between project and line management
3. Work planning of the individual resources

You will never be able to fully resolve resource conflicts. Yet, there are options to reduce them which have been outlined above. A strong Project Management Office with backing from top management features among the most important success factors.

The extensive PMO Survey by TPG The Project Group came to the conclusion that PMO support in project management resource planning clearly has an important effect on project success. Overall, this area of responsibility is least established, as it poses the greatest challenges.

Let us know by leaving a comment: what are the challenges you have encountered in project management resource planning.

Our final tips

Get to know the individually adaptable “PPM Paradise” – the optimal environment for your enterprise-wide project, program, portfolio and resource management. Download the eBook now (just click, no form).

And sign up for our bi-weekly blog newsletter to make sure you receive all our updates.

Der Beitrag Project Management Resource Planning – The Challenges erschien zuerst auf Blog Project Management for Companies.