1 Determine what resources you have
The first step to resource planning is understanding what resources you have. Take the five components of the resource plan we discussed above and individually determine what is needed for the upcoming project and whether you actually have access to those resources.
When it comes to team members, it's important to know who your company has and what their skills, capabilities and experience are. Knowing the strengths and weaknesses of your team members is the foundation of assigning the right tasks to the right employees. An unbalanced workload hinders project execution and makes the process more difficult than it needs to be.
It is also important to determine how much time you have for the whole project, individual tasks, and different stages so that you can set realistic deadlines. The better you understand time as a resource, the easier it will be for you to make changes along the way.
Once you've determined what resources you have, you'll also need to determine what you might be missing and what steps to take to address the resource deficit.
2 Get the team involved
Identifying resources and knowing how best to allocate them is a difficult task. Therefore, it is important to involve the whole team. Hold a resource planning meeting and don't be afraid to let team members make important decisions, or at least inform them.
The participation of all team members means that everyone is working on the same page and knows which direction the project should go in order to avoid misunderstandings. You can assign resource planning to different team leaders, who can then report back and serve as a guide.
3 Track progress
To stay on top of where your company's resources are going, you'll need to track your project's progress and how resources are being used. Resource tracking will allow you to monitor actual resource usage compared to the original resource plan and make adjustments if necessary.
Tracking the use of dedicated resources on a regular basis (monthly, weekly, daily) will allow the team to stay on track, achieve milestones, and collaboratively solve problems as they arise, avoiding critical mistakes.
For this, you can implement Yaware.TimeTracker – an effective system for monitoring the productivity of employees.
4 Be flexible
In project management, flexibility will be one of the most valuable assets you can have. Projects will almost always require some level of adjustment, so it pays to expect change and approach a project with a flexible mindset.
A flexible mindset will make you and your team brave for change and encourage you to be open to alternative solutions. In general, it is an environment where employees are not afraid to put new ideas forward and participate in the decision-making process.
5 Use the data to evaluate
We've already discussed that historical data is an important component of any resource utilization plan, and it's important to continually collect as much resource utilization data as possible to assess ongoing project processes.
To make decisions with the aforementioned flexibility in mind, these decisions are best based on real-time data. Effective use of data will increase productivity and stretch your resources even further. You can collect resource data in a simple spreadsheet or use resource tracking software.
Again, it could be Yaware.TimeTracker.
With its help you will learn:
- what time of day is most productive for employees;
- what resources employees use to perform tasks;
- how much time is spent on tasks;
- when there are difficulties in performance and help is needed;
- which distracts employees and prevents them from moving forward.
Want to start using Yaware.TimeTracker? Sign up right now.
Moreover, Yaware offers 14 days of free use of the program so that you can experience its functionality to the fullest!
