According to an HBR finding 2018, agile adoption has gone beyond IT. As per their survey, about 55% of specific sample organizations have partially implemented agile methodology & processes, and a quarter of the same group has already put it into practice.

The traditional project management method tries to complete the delivery within a stipulated time and budget. It does not allow frequent changes to the business requirements in the middle of the project. Agile project management, on the contrary, fixes time and cost to control the requirements. It heavily relies on the collaboration between the team and the business users to create the right product.

Managing resources is an essential component of project management. They are scarce, expensive, and must be utilized efficiently and effectively. But does resource management play a significant role in the agile development framework? It certainly does, as it is the only way to control project resource costs and complete the delivery satisfactorily.

This article discusses several bottlenecks and their solutions in agile resource planning and management.

What is agile methodology?

Agile methodology is an iterative and incremental approach to project management that involves continuous feedback and adaptation to changing requirements and priorities. It offers a flexible and collaborative approach that helps deliver high-quality products within time and budget.

There are many different agile methods, some of which are Scrum, Kanban, Lean, RAD, and Extreme Programming. Scrum is a robust framework for implementing agile software development processes and other projects. It utilizes short iterations of work, called sprints, and daily meetings, called scrums, to tackle discrete portions of a project until it is completed. Scrum has three key roles: The Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Team members.

The sprint planning meeting is held on the first day of every sprint. After a delivery commitment is made in a sprint planning meeting, the team begins the work and tracks its progress. At the end of each sprint, the stakeholders are invited for a sprint review. The features completed during the sprint are discussed, and feedback is requested.

The product owner keeps track of the feedback and maintains a product backlog with the changes.

In the release-planning meeting, the product owner presents the features they want to be completed in the quarter. Then, the team provides gross-level estimates, which decide the specific features that can be completed in a given sprint. The team also jointly determines how many such features can be completed by the quarter-end.

Release planning can be feature-driven (how many sprints will be required to deliver all the features?), time-driven (how many features can be completed by a specific deadline?), or cost-driven (Important features that must be created within the budget?).

The Scrum methodology requires product backlog (work to be done), sprint backlog, release burndown, and sprint burndown. In addition, the team defines all other forms of documentation as per the specific situation.

The project manager often becomes the scrum master, but this may not always be true. For example, in traditional estimating, all requirements are fully defined, with tasks created and estimated based on their fixed scope. Conversely, agile resource planning and estimation use a top-down method to forecast each sprint.

What are the characteristic traits of agile resource planning?

Agile resource planning is an approach to managing and allocating resources in a flexible and adaptive manner, primarily used in project management and software development contexts. The traits of agile resource planning include:

Flexibility

Agile resource planning emphasizes the ability to quickly respond and adapt to changing project requirements, priorities, and resource needs. It allows for adjustments and reallocation of resources based on evolving circumstances.

Iterative approach

Agile planning is often done in short iterations or sprints, with frequent reassessment and adjustment of resource allocation based on feedback and progress. This iterative nature allows for continuous improvement and optimization of resource utilization.

Collaboration

Agile resource planning encourages collaboration among team members, stakeholders, and resource owners. It involves open communication and close cooperation to ensure that the right resources are available at the right time. Apart from technical and domain knowledge, the following additional skills are also required in an agile resourcing environment. In addition, the following agile characteristics help in delivering high-quality projects.

Prioritization

Agile planning involves prioritizing tasks and resource allocation based on their value and impact. It focuses on delivering high-value features or outcomes early on, enabling stakeholders to provide feedback and make informed decisions.

Continuous monitoring and adaptation

Agile resource planning requires ongoing monitoring of resource usage, progress, and performance. It emphasizes the need to gather data, analyze it, and make necessary adjustments to optimize resource allocation and ensure project success.

These critical traits of agile resource planning help effectively manage resources in dynamic environments. But first, let’s understand the challenges of resource planning in an agile environment.

Challenges of managing resources in agile environment

For projects to be successful, it is vital to have the right resources. While agile methodologies offer flexibility and adaptability, managing resources effectively within this can be complex. Here are some common challenges of managing resources in an agile environment:

Difficulty in managing changing project requirements and scope

Agile projects are characterized by their adaptability and responsiveness to change. However, this flexibility can pose challenges when it comes to resource management. As project requirements evolve, new tasks can emerge, existing tasks can be reprioritized or modified, and additional resources can be added to the project.

If projects managers are unable to anticipate the changes and manage them accordingly, it can lead to last-minute firefighting for resources and overloading of existing employees. This impacts on the project quality and causes delays in delivery.

Inability to manage competing project priorities

Agile projects often operate in dynamic environments where priorities can shift rapidly. Stakeholder requirements, market conditions, or internal organizational changes can lead to changes in project priorities.

Constantly juggling competing priorities and conflicting resource demands can cause significant stress and burnout among team members. It can lead to a decrease in morale and productivity. This, in turn, can further hinder the progress of agile projects.

Conflicting resource demands

In an agile environment, resources typically work on multiple projects concurrently. However, each project has its own set of deadlines, deliverables, and resource requirements which can result in conflicting resource demands and contention among different projects or teams.

This can cause delays, conflicts, and compromises in resource allocation decisions, impacting project progress and overall efficiency. If tasks or projects with high priority are not given the necessary resources, it can result in missed deadlines and compromised project schedules.

Poor communication and collaboration between teams

Effective communication and coordination are crucial for resource management in agile projects. However, lack of proper communication channels, poor resource visibility and dispersed teams can affect the collaboration between team members, stakeholders, and project managers.

This can result in misinterpretations and misalignment of expectations, leading to inefficiencies, duplicated efforts, and rework. As a result, team members may spend more time seeking clarification, impacting the overall productivity and project progress.

This article shows you the importance of collaboration and cross-team collaboration best practices.

Skill gaps and resources shortages

Agile projects often require a diverse range of skills and expertise. However, poor visibility into resources skills, lack of proper training and development opportunities, skill obsolescence, etc., can lead to skill gaps, as team members may not have the necessary competencies to effectively contribute to agile projects.

Without the necessary expertise, teams may make mistakes or overlook critical aspects of the project, leading to failures or low quality of deliverables. In addition, it also affects employee productivity because resources struggle to perform tasks efficiently due to a lack of expertise or resources, resulting in delays in project delivery

Knowing the challenges of resource planning in agile project management, let’s understand how advanced resource management software can help manage resources effectively.

5 best practices for agile resource management

Effective agile resource management helps identify and allocate resources to ensure that teams have the right skills and capacity needed to deliver high-quality results. Here are some best practices for agile resource management:

Leverage cross-functional teams and their skills

Cross-functional teams consist of individuals with a range of expertise and abilities, allowing them to contribute to different aspects of a project. By harnessing this collective knowledge, organizations can optimize resource allocation and utilization for agile projects.

In addition, it promotes flexibility, as team members can adapt to changing project needs and fill gaps in skills or knowledge as required. By leveraging the strengths and capabilities of cross-functional teams, organizations can enhance productivity, deliver high-quality results, and foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge sharing.

Prioritize project tasks based on business value and dependencies

Agile projects typically involve a backlog of tasks, and it is important to prioritize them strategically to maximize the overall project value. By focusing on delivering high-value features or outcomes early in the project, organizations can ensure that the most critical objectives are addressed first.

Additionally, managers need to understand task dependencies to determine the sequence and order in which tasks should be executed. By consistently reassessing and reprioritizing tasks based on their value and dependencies, organizations can ensure that resources are allocated efficiently, resulting in better project outcomes and increased customer satisfaction.

Monitor and track resource utilization

Agile resource management emphasizes the importance of continuous monitoring of resource utilization levels throughout the project lifecycle. It involves regularly tracking resource usage, progress, and performance to identify any deviations or issues. By monitoring resource utilization, organizations can identify potential bottlenecks, underutilized resources, or overburdened team members.

This allows project managers to make timely adjustments and reallocate resources as needed. In addition, it helps in being responsive to changes in project requirements, priorities, or constraints and ensures that resources are aligned with the evolving needs of the project, optimizing their utilization and enabling timely delivery of project milestones.

Practice iterative and incremental development

Iterative and incremental development promotes the breaking down of work into smaller units and delivering value incrementally. This enables better estimation, planning, and allocation of resources. By dividing the work into smaller increments, teams can optimize resource utilization, as these units are easier to estimate and allocate.

Additionally, iterative development facilitates prioritization based on feedback, ensuring that teams focus on the most valuable and high-priority items, thus helping in competent allocation. It also allows for adaptability and mitigates risks, as the team can adjust resource allocation in response to changing requirements or emerging opportunities.

Encourage a culture of continuous learning and improvement

To foster a culture of continuous improvement in resource management, it is important to encourage team members to actively pursue learning and growth opportunities. This can be achieved through participation in training programs, workshops, or upskilling activities. By continuously expanding their knowledge and skills, team members can make valuable contributions to the projects.

In addition, embracing a culture of continuous improvement means viewing each iteration or sprint as an opportunity for learning and refining resource management practices. It is crucial to regularly review and adapt processes based on feedback received and the outcomes achieved. This iterative approach enables the team to enhance resource allocation, improve capacity planning, and optimize resource utilization effectively.

These are some of the best practices for efficient resource management in an agile project environment. Now, let’s understand the key features of resource management software to help manage resources in agile projects.

Resource management software for agile framework

Resource quality plays a significant role in an agile project environment. One cannot optimally use critical resources by assigning work below or above a person’s capability.

One also needs visibility into all the resources – available or not – and their costs. Only then can one balance people, technology, knowledge, time, and budget to deliver on time and goal. This needs to be analyzed before creating WBS (Work Breakdown Structure).

Here are some of the salient features of resource management software to manage agile projects:

Resource or workforce scheduling

Resource scheduling involves identifying and allocating resources for a specific period to different project tasks. With a centralized Gantt chart view of the enterprise, resource scheduling eliminates silos of spreadsheets. It also facilitates deploying the “best-available-best-fit” rather than the “first-available-first-fit” resource. Most agile projects operate with small team sizes. The product backlog will be adversely impacted unless the right resource is deployed for the right task.

Resource utilization

A resource is effective if it works on billable or strategic projects and is fully utilized per its capacity. The efficiency of an organization can be determined by the cumulative utilization of all its employees. Resource managers can proactively mobilize resources from non-billable to billable/ strategic tasks and maximize their billable utilization. Furthermore, ensuring minimum time is spent on mundane tasks such as attending meetings for the scrum team members is crucial.

Forecast shortfall or excesses of resources

Resource capacity is the total number of standard hours an individual is available to work per the employer’s arrangement. Resource demand is understanding the number of resources required to meet the demand for various types of work. Capacity vs. Demand is the process of forecasting shortages or excesses of resources by analyzing the gaps between resources’ capacity against the demand for resources.

It is a shortage of resources when the demand is higher than the capacity or supply of resources. Conversely, it is an excess of resources when the demand is lower than the capacity or supply of resources.

Effective bench management

Bench refers to employees not assigned to any project but on the company’s payroll. They are, in short, kept as reserves by companies on their payroll in anticipation of future projects. If the size of the bench is not controlled, this cost suddenly balloons and significantly affects the company’s bottom line. Therefore, Scrum Master needs to consider bench resource availability during sprint planning.

Forecasted vs. actual use of resource

Resource forecasting predicts various workforce metrics such as demand, supply, vacancies on the bench, resource cost, etc. A resource may be booked for multiple projects where they are expected to spend a certain percentage of the time. Therefore, a timesheet helps record the time an employee spends on each job. This is essential in agile project management to control project costs.

The PMO office verifies if the person concerned has spent the same hours on different activities as per the allocation or if there is a variance.

Managing pipeline projects

The two pipeline management goals are to build a healthy pipeline and win more deals. However, the pipeline or future projects also must be delivered on time and within budget, and one needs advanced resource planning to complete them. Many scheduling software allows creating a project plan using ghost resources, which can be replaced with the existing resources. Since frequent requirement changes are expected within a project that follows agile methodology, timely resource capacity planning is essential.

Supporting matrix structure

In a matrix organizational structure, some individuals report to multiple supervisors or leaders. This relationship can be described as a solid or dotted line of reporting. Managing a shared resource becomes complex when two managers have different project priorities.

It is necessary to ensure that the resource is not overloaded, leading to burnout or unplanned attrition.

Matrix organization can complement the agile project management process when the Scrum Master can access surplus resources in other departments.

Visibility of resource information for decision making

Relevant information about a resource can be viewed using an advanced filter to help decision-making. It can also be made role-specific, e.g., a project manager will only see information related to the projects he manages. On the other hand, a location manager can see resource-related data for the location. These fields could include skillset/competency, cost rate, charge-out rate, etc.

A resource management software with an advanced filtering option can quickly identify appropriate resources for a scrum master.

Forecasting financials

Forecasting is the process of making predictions of the future based on past and present data. To calculate the gross margin for a project, we need to know the charge-out rate and cost to the company of each resource. Most of the projects operate either on a fixed cost or on a time and material basis.

For a fixed-cost project, the revenue amount is already known, and we only need to calculate the resource cost for the project duration.

Scenarios – modelling and simulation

The simulation technique determines how projected performance is affected by changes in the assumptions that those projections are based upon. What-if analysis often compares scenarios and their potential outcomes based on changing conditions. The changes can be simulated in a sandbox environment, and the best possible scenario can be applied to the schedule.

When there is a resource crunch, agile project management can decide on project and resource priorities using simulation.

Business intelligence and reports

Business intelligence provides actionable insights by performing extensive data analysis. Resource management metrics are generated using real-time data, individualized reports, and dashboards. The reports allow managers to make informed decisions and monitor the overall resource health index.

Scrum masters can immensely benefit from the digital dashboards created using real-time business intelligence with changing requirements.

Workforce planning and optimization

Strategic Workforce planning looks at system-wide issues and strategies to:

• Support the organization’s strategic plan (e.g., reorganization and redeployment).
• Address external workforce factors that affect the entire business (e.g., succession planning for retirement bubbles or staff reduction planning for budget cuts).
• Maintain organizational capacity (e.g., in-service training).
• Mitigate risk exposure (e.g., safety planning and Equal Employment Opportunity training).

What is next?

Resources must be utilized efficiently as they are the most high-priced investments of any business. This must be considered while implementing effective resource management in an agile project. In addition, organizations spend a lot of time and cost creating the right talent pool.

Depending on the nature of the project, an appropriate methodology, such as a waterfall or agile, can be adopted. Accordingly, it is necessary to tap the skills and competencies of resources for overall efficiency and profitability.

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in providing Enterprise Resource Management Software. With more than 20 years of experience, SAVIOM’s solution is being used by many Fortune 500 companies across the globe. It also provides tools for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software.

Whether it is Agile, Waterfall, or any other methodology, SAVIOM can provide a comprehensive solution for managing resources.

Having the right resources for suitable projects at every stage is crucial for the overall efficiency and success of the company.

There is a constant struggle to find the best solution that will align with each project goal and balance resources between the projects. Often managers have to run from pillar to post for competent resources to deliver their projects on budget and within time.

With a strategic resource management approach, managers can improve each project’s outcomes, productivity, and profitability.

In this article, we have discussed some of the best practices that can help in resource planning across multiple projects seamlessly.

Importance of resource planning across projects

Formulating an intelligent project plan requires accurate information on every resource attribute, from skills and core competencies to their utilization and availability. These insights allow managers to develop high-level resource planning within the allocated project budget.

It will also help them enhance productivity and ensure the project’s success by facilitating the appropriate allocation of the right resource to the right project in the right capacities.

Timely project delivery

Proactive resource planning in project management allows managers to assess the capacity vs. demand gap in advance and bridge it with appropriate resourcing measures. Furthermore, the effective distribution of competent resources in project management ensures that no under or over-skilled resources are allocated to projects.

Over-skilled resources can spike project costs, and under-skilled ones can cause severe delays. Therefore, proper resource allocation helps to maintain the project quality and consistent delivery of services on time and within budget. project quality and consistent delivery of services on time and within budget.

Increased profitability

Resource demand forecasting facilitates planned hiring, which helps to reduce last-minute hiring/firing costs. Managers can implement suitable resourcing measures to identify and allocate competent and cost-effective global resources across matrix boundaries. It will enhance profitability by reducing project resource costs significantly.

Improve client satisfaction

The satisfaction of clients depends on how effectively the organization meets their expectations. It is considered a success when projects are delivered with quality services, on time, and within budget. on time, and within budget, it is considered a success.

Effective resource scheduling allows you to maintain the quality of deliverables and increase the company’s image.

Now that you’ve understood the essential benefits of planning resources effectively let’s learn about the various types of projects and resources:

How are projects and resources classified?

Resources and projects are regularly reviewed to maximize productivity, and the right type of workforce is deployed for every project.

The below section describes a classification of the different types of workforce deployed on projects:

Types of human resources:

Depending on the project requirements, the manager hires different types of resources, such as permanent employees, contractors, or freelancers.

• Permanent employees (full-time & part-time)

Permanent employees can be full-time and part-time resources and are often perceived as a cost-effective solution for any business. In addition, their productivity and contribution to meeting business objectives are higher due to their participation in any or all of the internal and strategic works.

• Contractual or contingent workforce

On-demand or contingent workforce is beneficial for businesses facing workload volatility due to changes in market conditions. In addition, a contingent or contractual workforce is considered helpful for short-term assignments as they have fewer overhead costs than full-time resources. Often the project managers utilize contractual resources at a higher price but have no liability to maintain them once the task is accomplished.

• Freelancers

Freelancers are hired for a specific work period with more work schedule flexibility. They are often employed for particular expertise or niche skills on a project at hourly or daily rates. Hiring freelancers is a cost-cutting strategy many businesses use as they cost less to the company in terms of training and other overhead costs.

Workforce in a matrix organization:

In a matrix organizational structure, employees have more than one line of reporting managers. This structure offers flexibility to businesses where resources with expertise can work across various departments and projects within the organization. Below is the resource classification in matrix organizations:

• Local resources

A local resource is limited to a specific location within the local infrastructure of the project. Local resources have the advantage of being in the proximity of the business, and they can build a better relationship with the key personnel of the client organization.A local resource is limited to a certain location within the local infrastructure of the project. Local resources have the advantage of being in the proximity of the business and they can build a better relationship with the key personnel of the client organization.

• Global resources

A global resource is known to exceed the system of the project location as it can be accessed from multiple locations through a global resource management model. It aims to have a centralized repository of a worldwide resource pool having diverse skill sets. As a result, companies can utilize skilled resources from cost-effective locations.

Project managers use the Nearshore and Offshore outsourcing model to program the expertise needed for any project.

• Nearshore model:

This outsourcing model refers to the resources in neighboring countries with similar time zones. As an example, the nearshore location for the US would be Mexico.

• Offshore model:

The offshoring model refers to outsourcing to resources located far away with considerable time zone differences. An example of an offshore location for the US would be India.

Different types of project:

Understanding the various types of projects is essential for planning and scheduling the resources for the right task. The project type is determined by parameters such as cost, duration, resource requirements, complexity of the projects, etc. Here are the two different project types:

• Small scale project

A small-scale project is characterized by factors such as short duration, a small team, and the budget size of the project. A single project manager can handle one or more such projects simultaneously. Here resources are assigned for multiple tasks and aim to deliver outputs over shorter time scales.

• Large scale project

Large-scale projects, on the other end, are characterized by the complex nature of the project, such as longer duration, larger teams, and a bigger budget. As a result, multiple project managers are seen managing large-scale projects headed by the Delivery Project Executive (DPE). The DPE demonstrates a complete understanding of client requirements and supports various project teams to meet their expectations.

Knowing the classification of project resources, let’s understand the roadblocks of resource planning across multiple projects.

Challenges of resource planning across multiple projects

Below we take you through the challenges that add complexity to managing the resource pool across multiple projects.

Poor visibility due to siloed data

The use of legacy tools and silos of spreadsheets across enterprises results in poor visibility and a lack of real-time updates. In this case, managers often allocate resources without complete knowledge of their competencies and existing bookings. This improper resource allocation leads to double bookings and over-utilization of resources.

A traditional resource requisition protocol

The traditional resource-requesting method brings in a lot of complexity and challenges in the form of double booking, internal conflicts, discrepancies, etc. In addition, the manual resource requisition process involves physically sorting out resources and taking calls/email requests from multiple project managers, which is time-consuming and cumbersome. method brings in a lot of complexity and challenges in the form of double booking, internal conflicts, discrepancies, etc. The manual resource requisition process involves manually sorting out resources and taking call/email requests from multiple project managers, which is time-consuming and cumbersome

Shortage of resources within a multi-project environment

It is particularly challenging if there is a demand for a niche skill set between different projects. The organization may only have limited resources to satisfy all the requirements. Allocating all available critical resources to a single high-priority project can create a resource crunch, adversely affecting other projects.

Rise of internal conflicts between multiple projects

Often multiple projects require the same competencies at the same time. This gives rise to resource competition, creating disagreement between project managers that may lead to conflicts. Some other causes of internal conflicts are differences in needs, resource schedules, project priorities, etc.

Unable to forecast demand vs. capacity

Inappropriate resource allocation and improper use of bench employees lead to unplanned hiring of high-cost resources in place of low-cost, similarly skilled ones. The lack of foresight into the capacity vs. demand gap elevates unplanned hiring at the eleventh hour, and as a result, expensive local resources get recruited. It escalates the project budget and impacts project profitability.

Lack of productive utilization

Planning and scheduling competent resources into non-billable activities reduces productivity. In addition, without the right resource planning tools, project managers fail to track real-time utilization resulting in suboptimal utilization of resources. This can further cause revenue loss, project delays, and a decline in employee satisfaction.

These are some of the challenges that lead to ineffective resource planning. Now let’s look into some of the best ways to manage resources across multiple projects efficiently.

Strategies for effective resource planning across multiple projects

Now the question arises- What is the best way to manage multiple projects?

In a multi-project environment, resource planning is non-negotiable as it enables managers to monitor and track resources across multiple projects and activities.

Here are some 7 strategies that will help to keep everything on track without disappointing any stakeholder within your business.

Gain 360-degree visibility of all resource profiles

A Multidimensional resource scheduler facilitates identifying and allocating appropriate resources to the right project at the right time. With a unified Gantt chart view of the enterprise, it offers 360-degree visibility of all resource profiles and schedules that can help deploy them to the project based on their skills and availability. In addition, the comprehensive view of all resources allows managers to optimize utilization levels and increase revenue and employee satisfaction.

Prioritize projects

Resource management in a shared-services model becomes complex when supervised by two or more managers. Therefore, it is appropriate to categorize projects based on priorities and keep an updated list of tasks that needs to be done by shared resources. This will also help shared resources to be more effective and get involved with more billable and strategic initiatives.

Distribute key resources uniformly across projects

An efficient resource allocation will ensure that no resource is under or over-utilized against their available capacity. In this case, the resource managers can create a revised resource schedule to distribute them uniformly across projects. Resource Leveling and Resource Smoothing are the two strategic techniques that can be used to maintain uniformity.

Enable out rotation and backfill strategy

Strategic resource planning helps managers to out rotate an internal niche skilled resource from an existing project to kick-start a new critical project. To ensure that the previous project’s quality is not compromised, they can imply a backfill strategy, i.e., fill a resource with similar skills. A resource is short-listed for out rotation if the concerned person is not involved with any important activities.

Encourage multi skill building

Implementing skill-building programs that promote sharing and application of one’s knowledge is critical to the success of any organization. Managers should therefore invest in training and development activities to encourage multi-skill building among resources. Furthermore, when a resource’s primary skills are not matching any suitable vacancy, they can be made billable using their secondary skill sets, thereby improving billability.

In addition, Individual Development Plans or IDPs help employees learn new skills and enhance their work performance per their interests. It enables managers to align employee training with the goals and objectives of an organization.

Leverage cost-effective global resources

Developing a proper resource planning strategy that brings in cost-effective global resources and facilitates global resource management helps to control the project budgets. For example, managers can use a multi-location policy to identify and allocate cost-effective global resources from low-cost locations and control project costs.

Determine proper guidelines for matrix organizations

Given the complexity of a matrix organizational structure, where every single resource has dual or multiple reporting and accountability, the onus is on the managers to ensure resources are utilized optimally against their capacity. The shared-service model of highly skilled resources between functional units and projects lets managers check one pool of resources to fill the project’s demand.

A proper resource management tool provides data-driven insights into resource availability, utilization, and capacity, letting managers forecast the demand in advance.

These are some of the best practices to create a well-defined project resource plan.

Conclusion

Managing resources and projects are the two sides of the same coin. Some call it an art, and some categorize it as science to plan resources effectively across multiple projects! One needs to consider the project scope, financials, and every other essential aspect before creating a project resource plan.

But to effectively plan resources and maintain business profitability, it helps to use a powerful resource management tool customized to one’s requirements.

It provides a unified view among resources and ensures everyone has a broad view of different projects. It also significantly helps managers make informed decisions that enhance all business operations and boost resource utilization and productivity.

How do you manage multiple projects and deadlines in your organization? Are you leveraging appropriate project resource management solutions to resolve resourcing bottlenecks?

The Glossary

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in providing the most potent and configurable solutions for . Having more than 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence in over 50 countries. It is also popular with more than 100 customers and helping them to achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software which can be easily customized as per business requirements. , professional service automation, and workforce planning software which can be easily customized as per business requirements.

Productivity and the work-etiquette of your resources decide the fate of your projects. For instance, if a highly-skilled employee takes a leave unexpectedly during the course of a project, it will hamper the project’s progress. Moreover, if other tasks are dependent on this one, it will have a domino effect bringing the project to a stop.

Apart from the accounted sick and planned leaves, if you observe prolonged absenteeism, then it is a matter of concern. The reason behind this can be either personal or professional. It’s the job of the project manager to find out the root cause and implement the right measures to avoid unscheduled absenteeism.

This article explains in-depth the effects, causes, and ways to tackle unplanned leaves at the workplace.

At first, let us understand its impact on the project’s health,

How does unplanned absenteeism affect the project’s health?

A project is divided into various tasks that are mostly dependent on each other. For example, let’s say you are working on a software development project. From, designing the prototype to coding and testing the product, every task relies on the other’s progress. If you don’t have an initial design ready, you can’t code, and if you don’t have a code, you can’t test it.

Now that we know every task is crucial and is critically dependent on the other one, imagine your coder (resource) suddenly went on leave for a long time. With no backup plan in place, your project’s progress is restricted causing unnecessary delays and budget overrun.

In some situations, project managers might overload another resource with the same task to keep the project going. It will cause overutilization and lead to employee burnout affecting the resource’s health index.

In a nutshell, unplanned absences have a cascading effect on the project’s progress, timeline, and finances eventually impacting the overall profitability.

So, what are the causes of these leaves?

Causes of unplanned leaves

Employees can take off for both personal and professional reasons. The personal reasons entail sickness, a pressing family matter, bereavement, and stress. In such cases, it’s the job of the manager to be supporting and understanding to help their employees cope better.

Personal reasons are not concerning as long as resources are back in time. However, if professional reasons are causing the absenteeism, then managers need to jump in and take charge. Here is a list of possible reasons,

• Employee burnout
  This is one of the major causes of increased absenteeism. If the resource is overloaded with work and has to meet unrealistic deadlines, it will lead to burnout.A Deloitte study states that “nearly 30% of the burnout is caused due to impractical deadlines or expectations.“In turn, they will start skipping work days and take unscheduled leaves.
• Lower morale and motivation
  Employees feel motivated and engage better when their work is acknowledged and rewarded. In case, this is missing, it will naturally make them feel undervalued and they will not feel like showing up to work.
• Bullying or harassment
  If a resource experiences an unpleasant situation at the workplace where he/she is being pestered, they will want to avoid it by skipping workdays. This can be due to the absence of an anti-harassment cell or committee where employees can report the incidents.
• Mismatched skillset
  Sometimes, employees’ skills, capabilities, and interests are not aligned with the projects they are assigned to. It can subsequently lead to disengagement, frustration, and ultimately be one of the main contributors to unplanned leaves.

These are the most tangible reasons for unplanned leaves. As an employer, one must implement the right measures to provide an optimistic work environment and avoid these absences.

Here is how you can leverage a resource management tool to deal with unplanned absenteeism,

How can a resource management tool help with unscheduled absences?

Since employee burnout is one of the major causes of unplanned leaves, managers can employ an intuitive resource management tool to deal with it. Using the advanced features of the tool, resource managers can go ahead and manage the resources and their utilization levels effectively.

You can utilize the following functionalities of the tool to address this issue,

Optimizing resource utilization

Unscheduled absences reduce the overall capacity of the organization. In this situation, to keep the project on course, project managers end up overloading some resources. To refrain from doing so, managers can equip the tool and get a birds-eye view of the resources and the projects.

To allocate the work to another resource, you can go ahead and enter the requirements using advanced filters. This will give you the list of resources who are the right fit for the task along with their availability. You can now schedule the task for employees who have the bandwidth and will not be overallocated.

This process will help you optimize the utilization levels of each resource and ensure that no one is over or under-allocated.

Create a backup plan for the critical tasks

The unannounced absences can be dealt with during the project planning stage as well. Every project has some critical tasks which cannot be stopped midway or it will bring the project to a standstill. When you are drawing out your project plan and scheduling resources for the tasks, you can create a backup plan for these critical ones.

Taking the same example of a software development project, managers can book a parked or generic resource for the coding task. In this case, if at all the coder goes on leave, you have a backup ready when you need one. It will keep the project going without causing any delays.

Keep a buffer during capacity planning

Often it happens where decision-makers load 100% of a resource’s capacity to one project itself. This is an impractical step as a resource might spend some time on admin tasks or other BAU activities. Instead of doing this, managers can take a smart step and load 50-60% of two or more employees’ availability to the critical task.

So, even when a resource booked for a critical task goes on leave, you have other resources with the same skillset to take up the job. This will save you from two hassles- for one, your project’s progress is not hampered and for two, you are saving your resources from getting overutilized.

Thus, intelligent scheduling and resource loading during the project planning stage can help you create a contingency plan for these times.

This is how implementing a robust tool can help you tackle absenteeism. In addition to this, one can focus on minimizing the leaves by rethinking their managerial approach. Here are some tips on how to reduce unplanned absences at your workplace,

How to minimize unplanned absenteeism at the workplace?

Formulate a clear attendance policy

Documenting a crisp and clear attendance policy helps you to set some standards regarding absenteeism. It should include the following,

• Kind of leaves available for employees
• Rules related to paid and unpaid leaves
• The process to apply for leave
• Consequences for prolonged absenteeism
• How the leaves are recorded in your firm

When your resources are aware of the rules and regulations your firm follows, they are likely to manage their calendar better.

Invest in a physical and mental wellness program

Your workforce’s well-being has a direct impact on their productivity. Furthermore, when you put their health at the forefront, the workforce feels valued at the firm. Employers must therefore invest in a wellness program that can include free gym membership, free psychological consultation, regular health check-ups, or it can be even as small as curating a balanced lunch menu.

When employees are doing well and their health is taken care of, they are less likely to take unannounced sick leaves.

Avoid micromanagement and encourage autonomy

According to a study, 85% of employees said micromanagement negatively impacted their morale and 71% claimed it interfered with their performance. To keep this from happening, project managers should instill trust in their employees and let them manage their work.

When resources have the autonomy to carry out their tasks, they will work with all their might to reduce errors and ensure quality. On the other hand, if they are constantly told what to do, they will eventually lose interest and start taking leaves. Steve Jobs once said, ‘It doesn’t make sense to hire smart people and then tell them what to do. We hire smart people so they can tell us what to do.’

Provide flexible work policies

A better work-life balance is a top priority for employees these days. In fact, it plays a direct role in enhancing productivity and performance. When your workforce is able to work better while taking care of their personal life, inculcating a work-from-home policy will be a win-win for both.

Furthermore, managers should provide liberty to their employees to choose their tasks. For example, if you have two top-priority projects with the same resource demand, you can consider your employee’s task preference. These practices will make them feel heard and they will know their opinions matter. This eventually leads to better engagement and increases the work rate.

Build the right infrastructure for a better work environment

Your physical work environment impacts productivity as much as your work culture does. In fact, decision-makers are taking initiatives to improve their workplace and working conditions. Forbes says, 70% of employers have improved their physical environments to encourage healthy behaviors.

Thus, to promote a healthy and positive work environment, managers should restructure their workspaces.

Employees will feel empowered to work better and stick around when their well-being is your top priority.

Integrate IDP in your work policy

Every employee in your firm has certain goals and aspirations to excel in their career. When their goal aligns with the firm’s ultimate vision, they will engage themselves better. They expect that their development is taken into account while they are working for you. Every employee in your firm has certain goals and aspirations to excel in their career. When their goal aligns with the firm’s ultimate vision, they will engage themselves better. They expect that their development is taken into account while they are working for you.

It’s a manager’s duty to create Individual development plans to cater to your resource’s professional development. You can conduct regular one-on-ones to know about their future goals and plans. If your employees see their growth matters as much as your firm’s, they will stay with you for the long haul.

The Takeaway

The onus is on managers to keep their workforce inspired and motivated to help them perform better. This can be done at ease when you have the right mix of environment and culture. The above-mentioned tips will help you empower your workforce.

With your continuous efforts, your employees will be encouraged to turn up to work every day. Along with this, the right tool will help you deal with sudden leaves that are unavoidable. So, how have you been managing the unscheduled absenteeism so far?

The SAVIOM Solution

SAVIOM is no doubt the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable Enterprise Resource Management Solution. Having more than 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has a global presence in over 50 countries. It is also popular with more than 100 customers and helping them to achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software which can be easily customized as per business requirements.

Picking up the pieces and starting over again is not simple. In fact, according to the Institute for Business and Home Safety, one-fourth businesses struck by natural disasters are never able to re-open their doors and continue with operations. Most organizations rely on insurance policies that only happen to cover the financial ramifications incurred in case of a fire break-out or a flood but fail to protect the company’s market share or reputation. Consequently, your competitor gets a  substantial lead in the race.

Business Continuity Plan is a saving grace when businesses are gripped with a catastrophe. As the name suggests, it helps businesses quickly resume their business functions in the event of a disaster. Business continuity planning is more comprehensive than a disaster recovery plan and entails instructions and procedures that an organization must follow in the face of tragedy. It covers business processes, human resources, assets, and business partners. Contrary to some beliefs, disaster recovery (DR) plan and business impact analysis (BIA) are not synonymous to BCP but in fact, they form parts of it.

1. Steps to create a business continuity plan

When a BCP is not formulated yet, organizations should start with BIA by first evaluating their business processes, identifying which ones are at risk, and configuring the latent losses associated with them once they go down. 

This essentially enables a bird’s view of the organization’s processes and ascertains which ones need primary focus. Next step would entail devising a plan and it involves six steps:

• Recognize the scope of the plan: Identifying if the plan would cover the potential risks and threats that could disrupt business.
• Identify critical business areas: Analyze which key areas need to be worked on first and need a recovery plan.
• Recognize vital functions: Next, prioritize the processes and operations that need to continue when disaster strikes.
• Determine suitable downtime for each critical function: This will help in determining how long the business will operate without these components running. 
• Formulate a plan to maintain operations: This step includes reducing interruptions, recovery from them, and resources required to protect staff, assets, and business as a whole.
• Test the business continuity plan: Controlled testing strategy will help identify gaps and improvise before it is implemented when tragedy befalls.
• Review and enhance the BCP plan: The BCP needs to be updated regularly to keep up with business and technology trends by all departments and units to discuss if any area needs modification.

It is important to note that a disaster recovery plan is indispensable for a business continuity plan to work effectively, so developing one is crucial.

Now that a plan is in place, the next step would be to choose the right BCP plan that fits like a glove around your business and prevents disruption in case of an unprecedented misfortune. The following factors are beneficial in deciding an exemplary business continuity plan for your organization:

A. Natural disasters and potential threats:

The business continuity management system revolves around the type and severity of risks your organization is most likely to confront. Natural calamities such as a flood or tornado could disarm the IT infrastructure, while global pandemics like the ongoing COVID 19 crisis is having a detrimental effect on human resources.

A malicious cyberattack would bring down the network while a bombing would destroy lives and network components. So prioritizing them based on their likelihood and then formulating one that covers all sorts of contingencies will strategize business continuity and disaster recovery.

B. Distinguished areas of responsibility:

In the event of a global pandemic situation like the present COVID 19 crisis, where members are on sick leave, vacation off or worse, and the lives of personnel are at risk, having pre-assigned alternates will nullify conflicts between the department heads at the time of crisis. To establish a chain of command, it is imperative to assign responsibilities to the right resource having the right skills, experience, qualifications, and other credentials to do so. Training them in incident management, disaster preparedness, and recovery should be inclusive in testing the business continuity plan. 

C. Digitization of business continuity plan:

Digital transformation has permeated every aspect of business and the severity of risks emanating from it continues to expand. Dynamic digital threats call for an agile, intuitive and highly responsive BCP. Threats induced by cyberattacks, phishing schemes, and data breaches augment like wildfire and without a digitized BCP, teams cannot mitigate the crisis. Also, business downtime can be avoided with a proactive approach and prompt crisis response. When data contravention occurs, teams must be equipped with one-touch access to information using a business continuity app. When lengthy documents are metamorphosed into situation-role-location sensitive digital playbooks, stakeholders are better prepared to protect the company’s operations, employees, and bottom line.

D. Disaster recovery team in-hand:

It takes a team’s effort to manage and normalize processes once the threats to business continuity wear off. An effective BCP should appoint a team of disaster recovery specialists from various domains like IT specialists, communications specialists, safety specialists, security specialists, personnel specialists, etc. This disaster recovery team of specialists will work closely with the emergency services in creating an actionable recovery program after considering the limitations and possibilities. The team can hence correctly identify the requirements and oversee the actions and demands from an operational perspective.

E. Offsite Data backup and restoration:

An effective business continuity plan will have the data restoration process figured out beforehand. Most businesses meticulously create backups and store them in the server room. Unfortunately, in the event of a natural disaster, fire, or terror attacks, all that crucial data becomes unrecoverable. Storing data copies on a removable media at a different location or backing it up over the Internet on a remote server will safeguard the essentials. Cloud storage ensures that all the critical data is secure and accessible over the internet for business continuity. Just as important, relevant personnel should be given access to keys, passwords, etc., to be able to restore the lost data and get users back to their productive state as soon as possible.

F. Devise crisis communication plan:

When disaster strikes and all lines of communications are disrupted, how can managers contact customers, remote workforce, or emergency services? Departmental collaboration involving external and internal stakeholders will supplement a business continuity management plan. This includes establishing an emergency contact list and a plan to re-establish contact. So the BCP plan should include saving the contact details of key employees like their mobile number, alternate email address, etc, in case of an emergency. Before devising a crisis communication plan, it is recommended to use one which easily integrates with the existing systems. It should only take a couple of swipes or clicks, to send an email, text, or call the appropriate person at desperate hours.

G. Auxiliary site of operations:

The BCP should spell out an alternative location set up in the advent of a crisis when evacuating the office building becomes obligatory. When the building is damaged beyond repair and is rendered unusable, enterprises have to shut down operations and wait for an alternative brick and mortar space before resuming normalcy. Having a vacant facility in hand to move to will reduce business downtime. Another lesser expensive alternative that could be taken into consideration is relocating to a branch office in case of multiple sites. BCP will also involve the budget plan of estimating the cost of shifting, setting up and ongoing operations in the new facility.

Creating a Business Continuity Plan to withstand a major disaster is a gradual process that thrives on continuous improvement. It is not just another project with a specified start and maturity date, but a long term goal. A well-equipped workforce and enhanced processes backed by a BCP plan will always be prepared for an unforeseen crisis and tackle the situation proactively to bounce back sooner than expected. 
A Business Continuity Plan backed by a resource management tool will facilitate efficiency improvement in turbulent times. By assessing the capacity and demand of resources, you can leverage your recovery plan based on the contingency demand.

In the interest of time, it’s better to have one solid foundation than several separate systems. It’s always an added bonus to access the information on a centralized platform. This is where professional services automation (PSA) software comes into the picture. So,

What is PSA all about?

PSA, or Professional services automation is a system developed to keep everything in one place. Designed to manage and automate business tasks, PSA is an end-to-end solution for running a service-based business.

The ultimate goal of PSA is to provide an operational framework that is required to run an efficient professional business. It maps out the path to profitability for enterprises by controlling every aspect of project financials. It automates invoicing and revenue recognition. Not only that, it has the facility to empower team collaboration by unifying conversations, updates and actions. The kind of business intelligence you get forewarns you of deviations to t project KPIs, thereby helping you steer clear of difficulties down the line. After all, the financial gains brought in from a project hinges on what you do with the data you have.

PSA is a compilation of several features. Here’s a list of some of them:

Business Intelligence

Turning data into valuable information is imperative for managers to make strategic decisions. It should let you determine actions or steps to be taken in your project management life cycle. Performing this task manually is tedious and time-consuming. Hence, smart business intelligence tools that can accomplish the same with higher accuracy play an important role in PSA.

BI helps you reinvent your business with precise and actionable real-time insights. From information on KPIs to forecasting project attributes, BI has it all. It facilitates PSA with enhanced capabilities to predict and analyze resourcing strategies by department, team, location, offices and business units. It forewarns you about excess and shortage of resources ahead of time that gives you enough leeway to apply appropriate resourcing treatments.

Project management relies on predictability and advanced analytics of a business intelligence software that has the ability to integrate, perceive and display the data on one centralized hub. This information is then consolidated and displayed on dynamic project management dashboards. Owing to the advancements of technology, these dashboards are highly configured and are role-specific to multiple stakeholders.

BI reports give you the gist of project progress against various comparable attributes like forecast v/s actual utilization of resources. This, in turn, helps you enhance demand forecasting and overall accuracy of workforce planning.

Project Accounting

Controlling project budgets and avoiding cost overruns is one of the challenges faced by project managers. If due diligence isn’t undertaken early on, it can block cash flows. Worse, expenses left unchecked can cause you to invest in the wrong areas, and that too more than what would have been required. To prevent this from happening, having complete visibility of project costs from bid to bill is crucial. Project accounting in PSA helps you regulate these project costs by providing early warnings at every stage of the project cycle.

To gather information on financial accounting, PSA enables employees to record their time and tasks in customized timesheets. It also helps managers determine the contribution of billable hours by a resource. Besides financial accounting, it also reduces administrative costs by helping you track the expenses.

Project accounting software helps you to maximize billable utilization by giving complete visibility of the time and tasks of employees. Furthermore, it keeps you informed of project status at every stage and enables you to take necessary actions if goals and actuals aren’t aligned. This tremendously enhances project profitability.

Smart project management accounting also automates certain tasks and gives you enough space to focus on strategic decision making. You can automate invoicing and also minimize outstanding work in progress (WIP). This will eventually help you deliver projects faster than ever and make your business profitable.

Team collaboration

With the increasing geographical dispersion, coordinating with distributed teams can be vexing. In the time taken to reach a concerned member, tasks being worked on can fall through the cracks, causing you to spend more time investigating rather than getting the project back on track. Further, the lack of communication can lead to inefficiency in task management. To keep them engaged and motivated, cooperation and coordination between teams are crucial.

In the digital era, team collaboration tools are a boon for organizations to break silos of communication. These tools provide a unified platform to the resources to collaborate efficiently and accomplish goals within time and budget. Team members can reach out to the right person a certain task and finish it well on time. They can seek help from expertise via communication channels and take corrective measures if necessary.

PSA has integrated team collaboration with a goal to centralize communication and seamlessly complete project tasks. There are different channels of communication for different teams, departments or offices. With advanced role-based security, the right information is delivered to the right person which eliminates the likelihood of information overload.

Chaotic email trails can be prevented by using structured messaging platforms like social media ones which are user-friendly. This bridges the communication gap between teams and enhances the productivity of employees. Team collaboration software hence empowers your team to provide experiential insights and lessons learned.

Final thoughts

Along with these powerful features, PSA also compiles resource management, project portfolio management and forecast, and early warning systems. This strengthens the project lifecycle and increases the profitability of your organization. Hence, a resource-centric PSA enables you to utilize your talent pool most effectively and improve client satisfaction. Improved productivity and timely delivery of projects help you outstand in the business industry and increase your brand value.

Further, PMO brings consistency to project management that helps you repeat processes from one project to the next and also lets you identify areas of improvement. So, enhancing your PMO’s performance is incumbent to streamline project management.

Here’s an insight into the ways you can improve your PMO’s performance:

1. Early warning systems

Unexpected surprises during the project workforces your teams to put more effort into investigating and firefighting, which stalls progress. Every manager prefers to be informed of potential pitfalls to ensure that there is sufficient time to take the right course of action. Otherwise, it can lead to cost overruns, wasted resources and time and hamper the project’s progress. Evaluation of risks is an integral part of project management. It enables you to create a risk contingency plan and secure your project’s success. Early warning systems use the project data and analytics and provide you insights into various project attributes.

EWS monitors, forecasts and provides early warnings about various business KPIs that can go wrong and cause potential loss. It spots red flags including resources unavailability, skills shortages, low billable utilization, and financial setbacks. This helps you strategize project planning and make informed decisions to enhance progress. You can align resources to profitable work and redeploy resources on the bench to reduce overhead costs. Not only this, but early warnings at every milestone also prevent roadblocks before they start affecting your schedule.

2. Executive buy-in

Success of a project hinges on how well the project sponsor relates to the project, project manager and stakeholders. Opting for an enterprise-wide involvement lets executives get on-board with your strategy. For one, their experiential judgment and expertise provide better judgment for the strategic planning of the project. For them to be on the same page as you, it’s necessary to ensure that your strategic plan aligns with the long term goal of the company.

Somethings are to be taken care of to convince the upper and middle management to invest in PMO. An approval depends on how well you package the idea. For instance, a technological enhancement might sound like a techie trivia until you elucidate its contribution to the long term goal. Also, building a coalition is likely to generate an enterprise-level buy-in faster and on a greater scale. People pitching their PMO development model keep the organizational norms in mind to present their ideas and also suggest thoughtful solutions to existing problems which gives them an extra advantage. This helps the managers get executives on their side and make a real difference.

3. Learn from the past

The idea of learning from the past is drummed into every project manager. For that, all the project documents from a completed project are archived as inputs for further initiatives. With evolving technological advancements, this task has become faster, and much easier. Not only is the information stored securely, but it is also processed by algorithms to enable comprehensive data analysis. In other words, it gives project leaders clear-cut insights into scheduling, risk management plans, and forecasting. However, retrieval of data is one thing and understanding its context, another.

Historical information is used has to be relevant to the project to avoid significant errors in planning. The data from previous work can be leveraged to draw a schedule that gives an estimate of the project timeline, skills required, number of resources and other attributes. Besides scheduling, it also helps in risk management to get a head start on how to avert them. Thus, data from past works is an asset for managers to avoid recurrences of previous setbacks and streamline project planning.

4. Analytics

If you do not interpret data, how will you empower decision making? Effective enterprise PMO entails efficient management of uncertainties and roadblocks in a project. It requires PMO managers to utilize current analytical methods to analyze and control the risks and estimate costs with data-driven analytical prediction. Besides this, analytics also enables project managers to observe and analyze project performance objectively and make informed decisions based on facts.

A sophisticated analytics platform helps managers break down complex projects and foresee their behavior, deviations, and outcomes in real-time. They can use various analytical project reports and drill-down charts to manage projects. Early signs of slippage in various KPIs can help them take proactive actions. With analytics, managers can combine unrelated data streams and get deeper insights into projections. It will reduce your workload and also enhance the quality of your deliverable. An EPPM software with these analytics can help you get complete visibility of the project’s status and escalate the project’s progress.

5. Digitalization

Technology has reinvented the business landscape. The adoption of technology in several sectors has simplified mundane manual tasks and has given the chance for managers to focus on uniquely-human activities. It has empowered decision making by giving real-time foresight into several project attributes. AI, IoT and process automation have been a driving force in modern project management techniques. An organization is only digitally mature when they know which technology can align with their needs and scalable talent pool.

Transitioning from traditional to modern PMO is essential to minimize workload and manual errors. Rising to the challenges of digitalization is the key to maintaining quality standards of deliverables and outstanding in the industry. It will enhance employee engagement by providing a unified platform for communication. Process automation will automate jobs by analyzing applications, will regulate payrolls and what not!

Takeaway

Investing in the technology or other necessary tools just right will help you grow exponentially. It will also provide better insights into project attributes strengthens decision-making and help PMO managers to accomplish more in less time. Moreover, the automation of several tasks saves time for other high-priority projects. PMOs are the backbone of a project management approach. Hence, scaling up their performance levels is directly linked to enhancing the quality of projects. So follow these tips and make your PMO project a success.

Want to go into the subject a bit more? This post details the steps you can take as you usher in 2020 with all your plans in place!

Kudos to the technological advancements, there are several tools available that perform forecasting analytics, specifically one that takes workforce data into account. Besides estimating project costs, revenues, etc. it also gives a complete idea about the risks associated with the project such as unplanned leaves, for which you will have a backup in place. This way, you can prepare well ahead of time to mitigate such risks. To be forewarned, a tool should meet certain criteria. Let’s have a look at these:

1. Demand v/s capacity

Demand means a project’s requirement of resources, and capacity is the actual capacity of present resources in the organization. Often, organizations face challenges when it comes to closing the gap between the project’s demand and capacity. This is because of the inaccuracy in demand analysis. Moreover, incomplete visibility of resources and their availability leads to inefficient capacity planning.

To bridge the gap between demand and capacity, one has to have an idea about the availability of resources down the line. This feature is imperative for pipeline projects as it lets you know about the shortage and surplus of resources ahead of time using forecasting and capacity planning. Besides this, it also keeps your resources well informed about their future allocation which helps them plan absences and execution of present tasks accordingly. Also, they are not caught off-guard with changing requirements at the 11th hour. This is only possible when you stay ahead of time and plan the project. To achieve this, you can forecast capacity viz a viz demand using a tool that helps you foresee it using multiple perspectives i.e. by role, department, team, skills, location, etc.

2. Integrability and configurability

The integration of data is important so that you can view the data you require without wasting a second. For example, you need a resource with a certain competency for your project. You will need complete visibility of these resources and their availability on one page. Obtaining this via traditional methods is time-consuming as it will require you to contact different department heads, they will contact the concerned team leader and the cycle goes on and on.

In order to make it simpler, the integration of data of resources from different locations is very important. Besides giving you visibility to required data in no-time, it also integrates seamlessly with different software solutions giving you complete visibility.

Configurability is just as important as integrability, given that the best person who would know the ins and outs of your enterprise, is you. The parameters should not only be ones that concerned stakeholders frequently look at, but should also capture workforce activities across multiple perspectives. A rigid non-customizable view will not be so user-friendly as it will not sync with the parameters or job titles you use. That’s when a highly configurable tool comes into the picture. The architecture of the tool lets you customize the parameters making it convenient for your organization to view the data as per your set standards enhancing the users’ experience.

3. Historical data

Experience is the best teacher! The expertise of the stakeholders with previous projects helps you learn from the mistakes that were made and also gives an idea about the best course of action. The project managers have to keep track of these previous projects and the challenges and risks that came along. This is to avoid similar things from happening in future projects. However, it’s easier said than done. Maintaining a repository of these projects using conventional methods like spreadsheets can be nightmarishly tedious, and it’s not always possible to reach the stakeholders associated with similar projects as they may already be buried with work, in other meetings or may have even left the organization.

Instead, relying on an interactive tool to do the analysis of the previous works will help you get a comprehensive overview of the actions that did, and didn’t work. It helps in taking strategic decisions based on history and also gives you an idea of constraints that you might face if you take a wrong turn.

It keeps you well informed of the associated risks and helps you mitigate against them which will also invite projects with definite deliverables.

4. What-if analysis

Every manager wants to rule out all the possibilities and outcomes when streamlining project tasks. For example, what if the resource plans a leave, how will you fill the gap? What if there is a cost overrun? and whatnot! These are really important to be addressed to be well-prepared. However, to err is human. It’s likely that we might miss out on something or make incorrect estimations.

Instead of brainstorming for hours, how convenient will it be to analyze multiple variants by one tap? A demand forecasting tool that performs what-if analysis will help you gauge the predictions and outcomes if one variable is modified. For example, it gives you a complete overview of cost overruns, revenues, capacity, etc. if the timeline is modified. This analysis strengthens forecasting and covers every aspect. Moreover, you can unlock the information in minutes on which you would spend hours. It is a plan before the plan!

5. Multi-dimensional analytics

When planning for a pipeline project, a project manager has to consider every aspect to make an informed decision. However, if he/she resorts to traditional ways of accessing information from excel or any other sheets, it will take months to plan the project. Even then, there might be some details missing.

With changing business requirements, reliance on traditional ways to streamline a detailed project plan is not feasible. A tool that can generate multidimensional reports will let you slice and dice the data as you please and also lets you drill down to individual elements of interest.

This enhances the forecasting analytics by advancing the granularity level which aids in making sound decisions when planning a pipeline project or exploring prospective opportunities.

So, a tool that meets these criteria helps you apply appropriate resource treatments to enhance the project capacity planning. It provides you complete visibility of resources that tell you if you need to hire or retrain the resources or restructure the team. Once you know the future schedule of your resources, you can increase the profitability of your business overall. You can shift resources assigned to non-billable or low-priority work to billable projects. This move boosts a project’s financial returns while optimizing the utilization of resources across the resource pool. Moreover, you can take corrective actions and control projects by keeping a track of financial indicators like costs, revenues, profits, etc. thus, minimizing the possibility of project overheads.

Saviom provides a demand forecasting tool that meets this criterion and comes with many more features where it provides different reports like forecast v/s actual reports that give an insight into every project detail. Experience efficiency with a free trial before believing our words. After all, we believe what we see!

Documentation of the various activities is therefore considered to be a critical process for the project. As a part of the assessment stage, noting the level of progress, is mandatory before taking any decisions which affect the future of the project.

Using a tool at this stage helps to get the basics of project management, which can help you ease into a resourcing tool in the future.

Having said that, let’s take a look at the different parts of a project status report.

Project Status Report Particulars

An ideal project status report would include details of the different tasks to be completed as a part of the project. It should also have details of the different resources working on the project. This can include the department they’re attached to, billable skills and location of the project.

A good example of the project status report is the one which can answer which steps are to be taken in the future. Based on whether specific tasks are delayed or have been completed in time, better decisions can be taken for the future.

There are many versions of status report template available online easily. A simple search online would show that these templates are abundantly available. However, they might vary depending on the type of project that has been used for the template. For this reason, we have created a template which is adaptable to any kind of project.

With a precise recording of when and how the tasks are completed, it would help these stakeholders take better decisions in the long run.

The necessary parts of a project status report template include:

Task details

This is the list of detailed tasks and deliverables that are required to be completed as a part of the project. They may be divided into multiple stages, such as the conceptualisation, planning and activity stages. Tasks can also be aligned based on their priority so that the resources can be alerted. The priorities per task can be set from high to low, ensuring the right resources are deployed to keep track of timelines. The more detailed this section of the report is, the better will the project details be captured.

Planned dates

The planning stages of the project is extremely critical and of the most importance to managers, stakeholders, and even the clients. This is because it decides the actual timeline of the project, and highlights when the project will be completed. The planned starting and end dates would highlight the actual time for each task and sub-tasks to be completing, depending on the type of report.

Actual dates

These are the actual dates when different tasks are completed. They show the actual timeline for the tasks and when they are completed. Depending on the timeline of the project, you can opt for monthly, or even weekly status reports. When compared against the planned dates, it gives whether the project is on track or not.

Budget and expenditure details

This would include the expected and actual expenditure on the project. An expected figure is marked in the project management plan, which helps get an idea of the total cost of the project. As the project progresses, an expenditure overview can be made at every stage of the project. This would help in identifying whether estimates have been made correctly or not.

Task status

This would give a brief overview of the project task stages. Stages would ideally include whether the task has been completed, delayed, in progress, or has not started on time. This gives an indication of where the project bottlenecks are, and it can be avoided accordingly.

Owner and assigned resources

This would indicate who is in charge of the project stages. In case of any delays or queries, the person in charge can clarify questions for the different stakeholders. The assigned resources are the list of resources responsible for completing the tasks.

Project risk details

This is an important part of the project management status report. It would include a description of the different risks in the project. This would include a list of the key risks and dependencies, their probability, impact, details, and the person in charge of risk management. The estimated and actual dates for the project risks would help manage how much time was actually covered to complete the tasks.

This section can be populated in two different ways. Assumed risks to the project can be listed out with their expected probability and the impact it is going to create. Another way is to populate the section as the project progresses.

Keys and legends

The legend for the different categories will be highlighted in this section. This would include the different stages of project completion, risk probability, and the impact of the risks.

The project status template can be a useful reckoner to take stock of the progress of the project. It can especially be useful when there are complex projects to handle. However, issues may arise when you have many of these complex projects to handle.

It is in such cases that a resource management tool would come in handy. It would also help in maintaining a single interface among multiple stakeholders, leading to a unique information source.