Understanding the Concept of Strategic, Tactical and Operational Resource Management

As a Senior Business Process Consultant, Alan Shefveland has 33 years of experience facilitating business and technology transformation for companies. For the past 20-plus years, Alan has demonstrated leadership with project, portfolio and value management process implementations that span a wide variety of industry verticals, including finance, high-tech, light manufacturing, telecommunications and utilities.

  Governance   Portfolio Management   Strategy   Work Breakdown Structures (WBS)  

In arecently conducted survey, it was revealed that resource management is the top business challenge for most senior executives. Nearly 67 percent of senior executives surveyed identified prioritizing work to fit available resource capacity as their biggest business challenge. Despite the key role of strategic alignment, many organizations leave their managers mired in a myopic view when it comes to resource management.

Hence, when we look at resource management activities in Project Portfolio Management (PPM), I believe that there isn’t a single/linear approach to manage the resource management process. In fact, resource management in its essence is hierarchical; there are three views wherein the strategic lens drives the tactical lens, which in turn drives the operational lens. Therefore, resource management is best explained through the following framework.

Strategic Resource Management

What is it?
Strategic resource management focuses on resource demand at a macro level--a level where portfolios are defined and budgets are committed to. This is usually done at the executive level in an organization. Executive teams should be looking at various “run”, “grow” and“transform” initiatives trying to determine what investments are going to allow the organization to achieve their defined goals and objectives.In most …

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