Company resource allocation: PMO tools?

Michele Solinas Project Manager| CABEL INDUSTRY Milan, Italy

As an IT service provider we daily deal with optimal resource allocation between project and application maintenance activities. The idea is to introduce a new central PMO office with the responsibility to manage the resource allocation: overall yearly-budget perspective + on-going control and refine.

Looking for experiences and suggestions for tools and techniques.

Best Regards
Mike

Posted: Feb 28, 2020 12:33 PM

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Vladimir Liberzon R&D Director| Spider Project Team Moscow, Russian Federation

This is typical portfolio management task. Task duration estimates are not certain and so I suggest to add risk simulation to your requirements.
We use Spider Project for portfolio resource management.

Posted: Feb 29, 2020 10:13 AM

Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina

There are some topics to take into account. First of all, why do you need a new business unit (PMO office) inside your organization? The answer is because the organization decided: 1-program/portfolio/project management procedures/functions has to be included in our strategy. 2-after that, we understand that those functions/procedures deserves to be located into a new business unit (PMO) instead of splitting them between existing business unit.
Second, resource allocation is not so trivial that put those functions inside the PMO. The question is: will the PMO have the needed power to decide about resources that belongs to different business units? Projects are cross-functional and sometimes, depending on the type of organization, high distributed between organizational regions Third, maintenance deserves a whole "organization" by itserlf due to maintenace is about corrective/adaptative/preventive maintenance and most of the time a group of people have to be exclusive dedicate to it.

Posted: Mar 1, 2020 9:25 AM

Michele Solinas Project Manager| CABEL INDUSTRY Milan, Italy

Thanks for the feedback. Let's assume the sponsorship is enough to grant the PMO the "power to decide about resources that belongs to different business units".

In you experience, where to start to put the basis from?

An idea could be a resource assessment with skill-matrix and cross-reference with the current projects in pipeline.

Any tools or best practice to be followed?

Thanks

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1 reply by Sergio Luis Conte

Mar 01, 2020 9:58 AM

Sergio Luis Conte

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Sponsorship is not enough at all. Believe me. All the sponsorship will be volatilazed when things are put in the reality. For example, do people have anuals objectives defined and those could impact into an anual bonus? If the answer is yes then be sure those annual objectives are aligned with all you like to put in place regarding projects. Where to start? As I mentioned, deciding what process will be part of the strategy and then deciding if they deserves to be located into a new business unit called PMO. For example, how that new buiness unit will be maintained from costs/benefit perspective?. About resource assessment, again is a matter to understand the process/functions that each project/program is impacted then identify the needed skills to run them. Manage a pipeline must be inside your demmand management process.

Posted: Mar 1, 2020 9:46 AM

Sergio Luis Conte Helping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based Organizations Buenos Aires, Argentina

Mar 01, 2020 9:46 AM

Replying to Michele Solinas

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Posted: Mar 1, 2020 9:58 AM

Vladimir Liberzon R&D Director| Spider Project Team Moscow, Russian Federation

Michele,
yes, PMO shall have required authority for management company's portfolio.
Yes, you will need to create company resource database and determine resource skills required in your projects. For each skill create the list of resources that have required skill.
I would recommend to classify activity types and what skills are required for their execution.
It would be nice if it is possible to create corporate norms like typical activity durations or man-hours, resource productivity on typical assignments, etc.
It is also useful to create project WBS templates and library of typical fragments that are repeated in your projects with assignment of resource skills to project activities.
It is necessary to create certain system for coding of project parameters.
Existing project schedules shall be united into project portfolio and dependencies between activities of different projects and overall resource constraints shall be added.
Project priorities shall be defined and entered.
Portfolio resource constrained scheduling that takes into account project priorities and other constraints (time, financing, etc.) will provide scheduled resource assignments to activities of different projects.
Maintenance activities can be modeled as separate projects with highest priorities if they cannot be delayed and maybe with Start no earlier than constraints if their time periods are certain.
New projects shall be created using typical fragments (as Lego) with resource skills assigned instead of concrete resources. Then they shall be included into portfolio and linked with other projects.
Next depends on the software that is used. If to use Spider Project then during resource constrained scheduling (leveling) of the portfolio the software selects who shall do what basing on resource skills and resource availability. We call it skill scheduling.
If your software does not have this capability then look who is available at the time when his/her skill is required and replace skill assignments with assignments of certain resource. This is not the best way because assignments that look optimal now may become poor in the future because of some delays and other changes.
This is very brief and simplified description but the ways to manage portfolios depend on the selected tools capabilities.
Your requirements to portfolio management tool shall certainly include portfolio resource constrained scheduling that takes into account project priorities.
You may also want skill scheduling capability but with this feature you have very limited choice.

Posted: Mar 1, 2020 2:58 PM

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Company resource allocation: PMO tools?

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