Are you struggling with double booking of resources, resulting in scheduling conflicts?
Has the overloading of resources severely compromised the quality of project deliverables?
Unable to start a project on time due to a lack of visibility into resource schedules?
If you are facing the challenges mentioned above, you need to rethink how to plan your resources for the project. Resource availability is critical in driving the success of project planning. Understanding resource availability is essential for managers to effectively plan, allocate, and utilize resources throughout the project lifecycle.
To find and allocate the right resources, one must extensively analyze the workforce across the enterprise.
However, the process of analyzing and tracking the adequate resource pool is not as easy as it sounds. The lack of centralized resource visibility, absence of up-to-date skill matrix, misalignment in resource and project calendar, etc., makes this process more daunting. Therefore, managers need to adopt appropriate measures and tools to streamline the tracking of resource availability for successful project initiation and delivery.
In this blog, we’ll explore the nuances of resource availability within project management.
Let’s take a deep dive into its concepts.
What is resource availability?
Resource availability refers to the amount and type of resources that are currently accessible for a particular task or project. This includes factors such as the number of staff members, the quantity of equipment, etc.
Resource availability provides you with an overview of the resources’ schedule and a clear picture of who’s available to take up the tasks. A resource can either be partially or fully available, and they must be utilized to their full capacity. Based on this information, you can plan and allocate the project tasks in advance, avoiding last-minute hiccups.
If project managers do not have insights into resources available for the work, they might overload a resource. In worst-case scenarios, they might even risk booking the staff who lack the skills to accomplish the tasks.
Moreover, important parameters like resource capacity and demand, skill gaps, and optimal utilization scales are all directly impacted by resource availability.
Here is a brief description of each of these parameters:
- Resource demand: Number of resources required to complete a given project. It can only be fulfilled when you have the right number of resources available at your disposal.
- Resource capacity: Available resources with matching skillsets in your organization to take up the appropriate project tasks.
- Skill gap: The difference between the project demand and capacity is the skill gap.
- Optimal utilization scale: The efficient and productive use of resources and their skills constitutes the optimal utilization scale.
When these resource indicators are not managed efficiently, they can put forth certain challenges in project management processes.
Now, let’s first understand the concept of resource availability with an example.
What is an example of resource availability?
To better understand resource availability, let’s consider an example:
An IT firm has a cybersecurity project in the pipeline. The project manager starts the planning process once the project has reached a certain stage of probability. They assess the resource requirements in terms of skills, capacity, cost, and duration.
If the IT firm has adequate resource availability, the project team can start working on the project immediately without any delays or additional recruitment. However, if the required skills are not available within the firm, the project manager may need to recruit new staff or train existing ones, which can cause delays in the project schedule.
Moreover, if the firm has a talent shortage, the PMO (Project Management Office) may need to out-rotate and backfill resources from other projects or departments, which, when done incorrectly can hamper project quality and delivery. In such a case, the project managers must carefully manage the available resources to ensure that the project is completed on time without affecting other projects or areas of the business.
Thus, resource availability is crucial to the success of a project. Having the right people with the right expertise can help ensure that the project is completed without any delays or quality issues.
Next, let’s learn about the business benefits of managing resource availability.
What are the benefits of tracking resource availability in project planning?
Now, let’s address an important question: why is resource availability critical in project management?
Resource availability has the following benefits in project planning:
Accurate resource scheduling
Resource availability allows project managers to plan and schedule project resources efficiently, reducing delays and increasing efficiency. During the planning and scheduling stage, managers analyze the availability of resources and identify the ones with adequate capacity and matching skill set. It enables the resource manager to assign the right person to the right project and prevents instances of double bookings and scheduling conflicts. This, in turn, helps the organization with smoother execution of projects.
Improved decision making
Tracking resource availability plays a pivotal role in informed decision-making within project management. When managers foresee workforce availability, they can identify the shortages or excess well in advance. These insights enable them to take proactive measures like training, hiring permanent or contingent employees, outsourcing excess resources, etc., to mitigate the gaps. This ensures the timely completion and delivery of the project.
Enhanced productivity
Tracking resource availability directly contributes to enhanced productivity by enabling efficient allocation of resources based on skills, experience, and workload capacity. This process ensures that the right personnel are assigned to tasks aligned with their expertise, optimizing output quality. Additionally, it prevents overburdening or underutilization of resources, maintaining a balanced workload that promotes sustained productivity levels. Moreover, managers can distribute tasks by having a comprehensive view of available resources, avoiding bottlenecks, and optimizing workflow efficiency.
Higher quality of deliverables
With access to essential resources, managers can maximize utilization, resulting in superior deliverables within specified timelines and budgets. Moreover, monitoring resource availability enables competent allocation of employees, thereby avoiding over/under allocation of skilled resources. In addition, it prevents the allocation of under/over skilled resources to projects, thus, improving the project quality. This balanced approach prevents burnout and disengagement, ultimately enhancing project outcomes.
Minimize costs
Adequate resource availability eliminates the need to hire additional staff during the project initiation stage, saving resource costs. Moreover, managers can avoid delays and keep the project on track by having access to skilled resources at the right time. In addition, clear visibility into resource availability and other attributes allows managers to leverage global resources from low-cost locations across the enterprise. As a result, it will control the project budget and enhance profitability.
Better risk management
With adequate resources, managers can better manage the risks associated with the project. For instance, when the project scope changes or requires additional resources, managers can adjust workloads and allocations to mitigate the bottlenecks and maintain the project performance. Moreover, by tracking resource availability, managers can develop contingency plans in case of unplanned attrition or leaves where the projects may come to a grinding halt. It enables them to create backup employees or flexible workforce arrangements to help organizations minimize uncertainties effectively.
Next, let’s understand the factors that affect the availability of these resources.
Factors that affect resource availability in project management
Intelligent resource management drives the success of a given project. Deployment of appropriate, qualified human resources will help you maintain the quality of the project. Lack of efficiency in resource planning can, therefore, create project hurdles in the future.
These are some of the factors that can affect resource availability and, in turn, impact your project’s health.
Lack of centralized visibility
Businesses are now adopting a matrix-based, shared services model. Project managers, therefore, need to have a unified view of the enterprise-wide workforce. It will create transparency with respect to resources and projects.
When you have a 360-degree view of your workforce and their allocation, you can track availability of resources in real-time. This will reduce the project scheduling conflicts and eliminate the risk of over or underutilization of resources. Besides this, it will also add the edge of accuracy to your project plans. The lack of visibility, on the other hand, can spiral down your project life cycle.
Inability to update skills in real-time
The ongoing market volatility demands an updated skills inventory. Simply put, employees should be able to upgrade their knowledge based on dynamic market trends. This will help them keep their expertise relevant down the line. At the same time, managers should be aware of these added skills to make the most of them.
However, some organizations are still using spreadsheets to maintain their data inventory. The challenge here is that these spreadsheets are not updated for months, and eventually, the database just becomes outdated.
Managers need to scale up their systems and equip them with a smarter one where the skills can be updated in real-time.
By doing so, you will have clarity on everyone’s expertise and will be able to allocate tasks with ease.
Misalignment in project and resource calendars
Employees prefer to have the flexibility to plan around their schedules and time off work. However, the deadlines and their leave dates can clash for two reasons. When the resource calendars are not updated in real-time, managers do not have a unified view of their leaves. This situation can lead to discrepancies and chaos.
Overall, with a lack of visual stimulus to project and resource calendars, the project’s health and quality will suffer. Moreover, employees will not feel motivated or productive to work when the goals and deadlines aren’t defined. It is, therefore, important for project managers to define the timelines and schedule the tasks on a unified Gantt chart.
Impact of increasing resource costs on profit
Resource costs are a major deciding factor in overall revenue. If the resource costs go beyond a permissible limit, the profit margin will be affected and reduce profitability. The onus is on managers to ensure that they do not surpass the resource cost limit. This will help them control the project’s financials.
What factors can impact resource costs?
First of all, ad hoc allocations to complete highly specialized tasks can cost you more than your budget. Secondly, improper capacity planning leads to mismatched skill sets as well as last-minute hiring of expensive resources. This will reduce your project’s profits. To minimize project costs, project managers must proactively plan their projects well in advance.
Project managers competing for the same resource
Even though matrix organizational structure has a plethora of benefits, there can be downsides too. For instance, multiple projects can require the same niche skill for a similar duration. In this case, internal conflicts may arise between two project managers competing for the same resource.
To keep these predicaments from hampering your project’s progress, it all boils down to having an intuitive system. It will provide you with real-time insights into project allocations and resource calendars. In addition, a project manager will know if a resource is already booked by another project manager on a billable project. This will keep the discrepancies at bay.
All of these factors have a significant effect on resource availability. Now, let’s learn about the practices for effectively managing resources.
Best practices for managing resource availability
It is vital for managers to track resources and their availability as it significantly contributes to allocating and optimizing resources, ultimately ensuring the success of a project.
Listed below are some of the effective methods to manage resource availability:
Centralize all the resource-related information
The first step that organizations must take is to consolidate resource-related information like their skills, competencies, availability, and other attributes on a single platform. This helps prevent information silos and provides the managers with clear visibility into the resources allowing them to make effective decisions.
Besides, enterprise-wide visibility allows managers to check which resources are working on what projects and determine their availability and capacity accordingly. Based on these insights, they can allocate the best-fit employees to tasks, facilitating competent allocation.
Forecast future resource demand for pipeline projects
In the next step, managers should predict the resource demand for pipeline projects. For this, they can use the capacity vs. demand report to foresee resource shortages/excess. Accordingly, they can take remedial measures to bridge these gaps in advance. This will help managers to ensure the resources are available well in advance for the project initiation phase.
For instance, a banking app project will start in 3 months and requires 10 developers, 2 software architects, and 1 UI/UX designer. Within the organization, there was a shortage of 4 developers, 1 architect, and an excess of 2 designers. For shortages, managers can implement training, out-rotation, and backfill strategy or hire employees. For excess designers, managers can bring forth the project timelines or sell the extra capacity at a discounted rate.
Prioritize resource allocation based on business value
Managers must take a systematic approach to prioritize projects and allocate resources effectively. For this, they must clearly define the organizational goals and accordingly align the project objectives. Next, they must categorize projects based on criticality and urgency as high, medium, and low. Then, they must select high-priority projects that generate more revenue, contribute to the organization’s strategic goals, and allocate resources as per their availability.
This approach minimizes bottlenecks, streamlines workflow, and maintains momentum on pivotal assignments, preventing potential delays or disruptions. Furthermore, it enables a uniform distribution of skilled personnel and necessary tools to tackle time-sensitive tasks. This optimizes productivity and demonstrates an organization’s agility in responding to critical demands, fostering client satisfaction.
Optimize resource utilization to prevent under/overallocation
Overutilization of resources can cause stress, burnout, etc., and underutilization can lead to disengagement, lowered morale, etc., affecting the project’s progress. To mitigate this, managers must monitor the resource utilization levels regularly and take remedial measures in case of any variance.
If employees are underutilized, managers can proactively allocate them to various tasks. On the contrary, they can apply suitable optimization techniques like smoothing and leveling if they are overutilized. This helps in the optimal utilization of resources and maintains a healthy resource index.
Invest in training/ development programs to keep skills up-to-date
A LinkedIn survey reveals that 94% of employees would stay longer if the firm invested in their learning and development.
The above stat depicts the immense significance of investing in the learning and development of employees within a firm. Technological advancements and evolving industry trends have led to skills obsolescence and unplanned attrition. Therefore, organizations must facilitate training and development programs to overcome these challenges.
This will ensure the availability of a diversified talent pool that can effectively be utilized across multi-faceted projects. Besides, when organizations have a trained workforce, managers can allocate them to projects that align with their skills in case of increased demand or shortage of resources for projects. This can avoid constantly hiring niche-skilled resources, minimize project costs, and ensure competent allocation.
Promote collaboration between project managers to avoid conflicts
In a multi-project environment, organizations must ensure efficient collaboration between project managers to eliminate resource conflicts. For this, firms must establish clear communication channels for seamless collaboration. Additionally, regular meetings must be conducted where managers can share updates, milestones, and challenges to foster a cohesive environment.
Besides, firms can introduce a platform that fosters open dialogue, enabling the inclusion of diverse perspectives and the generation of innovative solutions. In addition to that, companies can implement a resource management solution that will offer project managers real-time data into workforce schedules and allocations. Based on these insights, they can take necessary measures to procure the required skill set and avoid resource conflicts.
Develop a contingency plan to deal with unexpected events
Unexpected events are inevitable in a multi-faceted project environment. This can happen when employees take long leaves due to personal issues, when a critical resource exits the organization, or when a resource in a key position retires. If the firms are not prepared with a contingency plan, the project’s progress may be affected or come to a grinding halt.
To mitigate these unplanned absenteeism or attrition risks, managers must identify potential talent for critical roles. They can then create a succession plan that provides appropriate training/upskilling measures to prepare the employees for key positions. It helps reduce the over-dependence on limited critical resources and boosts the organization’s ability to take up more multifaceted projects, enhancing revenue.
Conclusion
Resource availability is a lot more than just one parameter that can be taken for granted. The resource-centric challenges mentioned above explain how when available resources are not matched with the resource demand, they can cause project bottlenecks. Project managers must now look at resource availability thoroughly to deliver the project within budget and time.
How are you managing team resources and their availability so far?
Glossary
SAVIOM Solution
SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solution for managing your enterprise resources effectively and efficiently. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has created its global presence across 50 countries and helped more than 100 customers achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has highly customizable products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software based on business requirements.
