Outlining Resource Needs

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Risk Management   Talent Management  

When it is time to start or bid on a project, the executives who are paying for the project or the client will need to know what your resource needs are. Creating this plan will inform everything else about the project, including the schedule, the cost and the feasibility of even doing the project it at all. The project manager should be ready to provide a good outline of the resource needs so that the proper decisions can be made about proposing the project and then being able to execute it successfully. This will require more than just a rough estimate and some doodles on the back of the Gantt chart…

Be Specific
The first step is to be specific. A vague idea of the team you need will not suffice for planning purposes when proposing a project to an executive or a potential client. They do not want to hear that you need a few software developers and some business analysts, and maybe a technical architect or two. Instead, they will need to see a solid breakdown of exactly what people will be working on the project and when they will be needed.

When you are creating this list, it is helpful to look at previous projects and use their resource plan as a starting point. But if you do, make sure to look at their lessons learned. Starting out with two project managers and then discovering that the project failed due to a lack of project managers will not help you …

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