This isn't a straighforward project question so please bear with me. I'm currently working as part of a team of three PMs each running a portfolio of projects of differing sizes. We rely on a mix of internal and external developemt resource. Our suppliers provide software which we usually need to customize in house to meet our needs.
Unfortunately, the process for allocating internal resources to project work is very much at the discretion of the dev team leader who is usually reluctant to provide a view on the prioritisation of work and who's actually doing what. As such, the team respond in a totally reactive fashion, constantly firefighting and constantly under supposed pressure without really delivering much...
I've been asked to assist the dev team leader (by our mutual line manager) in creating an accurate resource plan so the wider PMO can see who's doing what and when, thereby facilitating some kind of resource demand management.
Have any of you done similar in the past? What tools did you use?
With a previous employer, what they did to manage the allocation of resource to projects was to have an overall Project Road Map that listed all the live projects and its resources already assigned and included up coming proposed projects in the pipeline. The resources were assigned to projects selected by priority, business criticality and budget availability. The tool that was used was simply an Excel spreadsheet. Within the Excel spreadsheet decide what tabs are required; for example. Business Unit: Sponsor: Project Manager: Resources: Project Total Cost: Budget approved: Start Date: End Date: Status: etc etc.
Decisions were undertaken by a Projects Steering Commitee that consisted of Senior Management e.g. Projects Director and Senior Managers in prioritising projects, when these should Start and whether budget was approved what resources were available either internally or to recruit from externally for assigning to projects. It all comes down to time and cost.
Staff resources must be realistically provided to each project based on the actual man hours required for the project - what I mean by this is that resource can be and should be working on more than one project at any one time unless the project demands a person full time and there is no extra time left to be utilised elsewhere.
The Project Road Map must be a live document at all times, be updated and communicated. You may choose to call it a Resource Plan as long it lists all the projects by priority and timescales for delivery have been approved.
I am not aware of your working environment and dont know how many projects run concurrently, whats in the pipeline and so on, my assumption is that a Development Team Leader can certainly contribute to the process for assigning resources, but the decision must be made by Senior Management which projects should be given the approval to start by priority and then it becomes a lot easier in determining whether you have adequate trained staff internally and or whether you should be recruiting from an external source.
Hope this is helpful.
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Michael WoodProject Manager / Business Analyst / Business Process Improvement Guru| Independent ContractorGig Harbor, Wa, United States
What I believe you will eventually need to do is to create a single PMO that allocates projects based on a "What's Best for the Company" prioritization process.
The only other alternative is to provide each project group its own set of dedicated project resources so that conflicts do not arise.
That might sound well and good until their are projects the spill over from one team's space into another. Then it could get ugly.
As a CIO I had 4 project managers each with their own area of expertise related to the business and core applications. Yet I still had one central PM oversight group comprised of the heads of the application user groups. They set the priorities. This worked very well as it kept visibility high, and kept the focus on progress at the right level. Saving Changes...
Andrew WilliamsPresident| Artisan Strategy GroupLewisville, Tx, United States
I had this same problem when running a PMO and I used a very simple Excel file that provides a 90-day resource utilization forecast.
I'd be happy to share the file and some basic instructions if you want to get in touch and let me know how to reach you.
Cheers Saving Changes...
Matt KirchmanDirector, Digital Technology Programs and Vendor Management| Oshkosh CorporationWisconsin, United States
I'm managing the enterprise PMO for my firm. As such, I also have the need to provide visibility into projects, priorities, and resource allocations across the organization to our executive steering committee.
Similar to Andrew, I'm using a basic MS Excel workbook to track resource utilization, projecting out 4-6 weeks (hoping to get to 90+ days eventually, but we're just beginning). In my case, were only tracking the project, the department, and the number of resources on a week-by-week basis. This doesn't provide a great deal of detail for analysis, but it does help department heads and the executive steering committee have some better understanding of when we are over allocating ourselves.
We target weekly updates from the department managers, making this a very "light" process, and increasing adoption and utilization of the tool. This information is compared against a separate analysis of a project's benefit and degree of difficulty to determine a relative priority that is in alignment with our resource capability.
It's not perfect, and it isn't as sexy as some of the portfolio management applications out there, but I am working to change a culture, and here, small steps work best. Saving Changes...
Anonymous
Hi everyone,
Many thanks for your responses - I've put together a rather ugly excel doc that at least tries to capture all projects and who's assigned in a particular week (for a 12 week period).
If nothing else it's doign a good job of illustrating over-allocation but in my opinion it is too simplistic.
Further work required.... Saving Changes...
Sarah KegleyManager PMO| Schools Financial Credit UnionRoseville, Ca, United States
Hi, Andrew - I just sent you an email. I'm in the same position as the rest of you; I don't have a dashboard application and I have deaf Sr Staff. I need a simple, portable and easy-to-read-at-a-glance resource utilization tool that shows everyone/everything at once. I can plug in estimate dates; just really want to show a sea of red in 2Q10 for example, so we at least consider holding off the next Big Idea until 3Q10.
Sarah Saving Changes...
Matt KirchmanDirector, Digital Technology Programs and Vendor Management| Oshkosh CorporationWisconsin, United States
An update to my earlier post. Though my Excel-based document seems to handle planning needs at a high-level, it is limited. To make data-gathering easier, I'm not tracking individual resources, just number of resources assigned to specific projects during a given week. However, this has started to become a problem for us as our Accounting group is looking to capture actual software development time on applications for capitalization purposes.
Now I'm in the market for a time tracking software that will also work well for resource planning purposes. I'm always open to suggestions. Saving Changes...
Hello,
Resource management module of primavera 6.2 has the answer to your questions.
I am using the PM module and it also has the same resource management module .
Every resource assignment is seen by everyone and the number of projects assigned to one resource or multiple resources assigned to single project can also been seen.Further we can level the resources for forecasting.
Pse try it once.download the sw from oracle as individual stand alone for free. Saving Changes...
Dina Garfinkel PMPProject Manager| Horn Group IncNew York, Ny, United States
I was once at an organization where we did all resource planning with an excel sheet, and editing it was a pain and it really didn't show very well what the workload was and how projects were affected when a resource was moved from one to another.
Then I started using LiquidPlanner for resource management. You can easily reassign resources and see how deadlines for all projects are affected. You can add in future work and using their best case/worst case scenario estimation and scheduling engine, the system will calculate when the project will really be completed given the other workload of your resources.
Would anyone be willing to share their excel templates. I am looking for a starting point as we currently have no tools in place at the portfolio level Saving Changes...
