David MorganProject Manager| Experian PLCGrantham, United Kingdom
I am currently working with our head of department to draft up a mechanism to assess incoming work requests from other departments and allocate work accordingly. The team has over 15 consultants who are generally working on multiple projects. The work requests are likely to be for a set amount of effort during a specific timeframe.
The issue with such a tool is that it is likely to be counter-intuitive, ie. most staff are likely to claim 100% utilisation which is understandable. What we will effectively be asking is what slack individuals have in their current work assigments in order to accept new work.
Does anyone have experience of utilising such a tool and is there a template anywhere I would be able to use as a straw man to further develop something for us?
David, I don't have a template for you, but our tool (Onepoint Project) has an automatic resource allocation/utilization chart that is created from all active project plans in the project database. Is this something that could help you?
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Prasad VelagaExecutive| OptisolCollege Station, Tx, United States
David,
You seem to have a resource-constrained, multi-project scheduling problem on hand. Otherwise, what I am going to say will be irrelevant for you.
Each work request may be a small project with one or more tasks (with dependency relations and skill requirements). All your 15 skilled resources are to be shared across multiple projects in a synchronized manner without any resource conflicts. You may like to have every new project optimally scheduled without any resource conflicts. It is usually laborious and cumbersome to manually schedule tasks of each new project with a feasible resource assignment by looking at the available time slots of each resource. Our scheduling software automatically does the same in a few minutes even for tens of thousands of tasks and hundreds of skilled resources (with individual calendars) that are to be shared across projects. The main benefit of the speed is the extensive what-if analysis of large-scale resource-constrained schedules. The software shows the schedule of each resource graphically and numerically. Being a scheduling tool, it also shows the projected daily utilization levels and idle time slots for each resource in the system. I am not sure whether you are looking for such functionality.
Tool can't help you on this area. Even custom build template for your project require a PM who can liaison and negotiate with consultants about scheduling the tasks. Also he has to find out slack time slots with consultants.
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Prasad VelagaExecutive| OptisolCollege Station, Tx, United States
Anurag,
Software tools are supposed to automatically schedule tasks based on the available time slots of all concerned resources. For each resource, the time slots form due to commitments with already scheduled tasks and unavailable periods. PM must know such time slots of each worker while scheduling tasks in a comprehensive manner. A majority of software tools are however unable to schedule tasks of multiple projects automatically and comprehensively based on the available time slots of resources. Those tools are not efficient for automatic resource-constrained multi-project scheduling. We are offering a tool to meet this requirement.
If tasks need be manually scheduled only after negotiating with each worker, then the random variation within task durations and uncertain events can make the negotiation a frequent and laborious function for PM. It gets worse when resources are to be shared across many projects. If the negotiation is done in real time, then the overall project schedules may get hampered and project completion dates may become more unpredictable.
Regards,
Prasad
www.optisol.biz
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David MorganProject Manager| Experian PLCGrantham, United Kingdom
Thanks for the replies, although I'm not sure I will be rushing out to buy new software suites right now.
It sounds like resource allocation planning is something where there is no 'right' answer, and it requires a great deal of manual effort to manage each month. Which is a shame, but thats life I guess...
I've seen various spreadsheets in use for this at previous organisations and none of them have been particularly good. Perhaps the fact they existed at all was a bonus :) Saving Changes...
Ketan KarkhanisKetan A Karkhanis| CiscoSunnyvale, Ca, United States
Any tool or spreadsheet you use will have the limitation of accurate DATA ENTRY. Everyone will want to show 100% allocation ( especially in these times) This includes the PM tracking everyones time
The fundamental assumption that you can use a tool to track slack in consulting model (where you have 15 guys and spread the work around) works only if there is an incentive for your consultants to accurately report the estimates for a particular job and subsequently their actual burn rate.
As PM's we cannot forget that no system can replace the people management part of our job.
Immaterial of the tool/template you use you need to think about introducing some behavioral factors.
1)Create a dashboard which lists all the tasks in progress, Start /End dates and who is doing what. Ensure everyone (all consultants have access to this dashboards). This will bring the factor of peer review and peer pressure.
2) Create incentives. When a new work task comes in ensure you hyped up the importance of it, so that folks will want to work on it. Give these guys some visibility ( As a PM you also need to be a Sales guy)
3) Create dis-incentives (not sure if thats word) : Recognize folks who have worked on most number of projects. Folks who are just buffering up to show 100% will realize its more fun to report accurately
You can experiment with many more factors..
Not sure if this answered your question... Best Luck!
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Prasad VelagaExecutive| OptisolCollege Station, Tx, United States
David,
You said, "Resource allocation planning is something where there is no 'right' answer". I would like to say there is no perfect answer.
There are many software products that only facilitate resource allocation planning in multi-project management. There are a few intelligent software tools that can assign limited resources to tasks over time automatically and rationally as part of comprehensive scheduling. However, a software tool is never a total solution in resource management. Although you need such a tool, you do not seem to have any interest to look at them.
