What’s New in Project Resource Management (pt 2)

 

Hello again, and welcome to another column in what has now become a regular-ish feature: What’s New In the PMBOK Guide®-- Sixth Edition. Last month I took my first look at Project Resource Management (read Part 1 here). Now it’s the turn of the second process in this knowledge area: Estimate Activity Resources.

Does this process name seem familiar?

If it does, it’s probably because you would have come across this topic previously in the Time Management knowledge area. In the new updated Guide, Estimate Activity Resources has been moved to Project Resource Management.

Estimate Activity Resources Process

This is the first process in the Knowledge Area. We’re still in the Planning process group.

This process is where you work out what resources you need to deliver the tasks you have to get done.

Inputs

There are two new inputs, which are:

Project Charter: Project management plan. That makes sense, doesn’t it? The project management plan contains the sub-plans that can be helpful for working out how long activities are going to take. The resource management plan and the scope baseline in particular will give you information for your task estimating.

Project documents: The vaguest of inputs is now used in this process as well. It covers a range of possible documentation including:

• The activity list (because otherwise you wouldn’t know what you were trying to estimate for)
• Activity attributes
• The assumptions log – there might be things in here relating to how tasks need to be carried out
• Cost estimates
• Resource calendars, although I’m not 100% clear why. At this point you are only estimating how much time an activity will take, not allocating a person to it. Tell me if I have got that wrong. As the next process is to acquire the team, I’m not sure that you’ll get a lot of useful information out of resource calendars as you don’t know who is on the team yet. Anyway, for the people you already know will be allocated to this project, including yourself, there could be some value in looking at resource calendars at this point.
• The risk register – there might be some risks relating to resourcing or the approach to tasks that will help you establish how long the work will take.

Tools and Techniques

There are 7 tools and techniques for this process. Expert judgement and bottom-up estimating came from the old version of the process. These are the new tools and techniques:

Technique: Analogous estimating. Watch a quick video on what analogous estimating is.

Technique: Parametric estimating. Watch a quick video on parametric estimating.

Technique: Data analysis. This actually covers a range of techniques and different ways of doing data analysis including looking at the resource capability and skills of individuals, considering different option for tools such as whether the project would be best served with a manual or automated tools, and make or buy decisions. Here’s a video on the 5 steps for a make or buy analysis.

Tool: Project management information system. This was just known as the project management system in the last version.

Tool: Meetings. Are these a tool or a technique? I think they are a tool. When you are working out how much effort it takes to do a certain activity, you’re going to have a lot of meetings. This is time where you’ll talk about the level of effort involved, the quantity of materials or resources needed, and of course come up with the actual estimates themselves which is the whole point of this process.

Outputs

There are two new outputs, and they are the obvious ones.

Resource requirements are what you get when you work out how much effort an activity is going to take. These can be prepared in various forms like a list of dates a resource has to be available for, a person spec, a table of types of role and then % availability for a period of time, and so on.

This output was called Activity Resource Requirements in the previous version. I imagine it was changed to make it broader, as the whole focus on this area has now moved to more clearly encompass types of resources that are not people.

Second, we have basis of estimates. This is the background and the ‘workings’ that show how you got to your resource requirements. You may have a lot of detail here, like all the calculations for your detailed estimating, and methodologies. Or you may have basically just guessed like a lot of us do, drawing on your past experience.

In which case, you’ll be noting down assumptions and confidence levels, but there won’t be much in the way of calculations!

However you have arrived at your estimates, it will be good to consider the risks identified that influence the success or otherwise of the estimate. Stick these on your risk log so your resource risks can be tracked along with everything else.

That’s the end of this process. The Knowledge Area has 4 more processes to work through, so next time I’ll take a look at Acquire Resources.

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