Despite my technical background, I now find myself in a position of resource allocation within a small company. I have about 10 people that I need to allocate across 10 project managers and 30 projects in roughly half-day increments.
I currently use a multi-colored excel spreadsheet to show who is where doing what and how the resources are allocated for the upcoming days and weeks.
What are some good options other than excel? The ultimate goal is to optimize efficiency in this system.
Thanks in advance for your time. Saving Changes...
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Bipin Lekshmanan PMPProject Manager| Wipro TechnologiesEdison, Nj, United States
you can try MS Project for resource allocation and management (even though I haven't personally used it to manage resources spread across 30 projects or so). But, we are talking about only 10 people so, it should work. Saving Changes...
Dina Garfinkel PMPProject Manager| Horn Group IncNew York, Ny, United States
Hi Eric,
I recommend checking out LiquidPlanner for your resource allocation needs. I also used to work in a PMO who where we were using a multicolored excel sheet to track resources. It got really messy really quickly, and took way too much time to maintain. With LiquidPlanner, you enter all your tasks with their respective estimates (in low/high range) and order them by priority. Then, you'll be able to see through LiquidPlanner's calendar view what your resources are doing each day.
Once something changes and a task needs to happen earlier, you'll drag it up to the top of the list and then see how all of the other tasks are affected. You won't have to worry about copying/pasting and moving boxes around like in excel.
If you are still looking, please take a look at http://pm-compass.com/, the Web based application, which includes modules for Project Management and Time Reporting. You can register on the site for immediate access to a hands-on evaluation site.
Regards,
Michael
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PETER MELLOProject Management Consultant| BrScanBrasilia, Distrito Federal, Brazil
If you try the russian tool Spider Project (available in English at www.spiderproject.com) you will find it to be capable of organizing your resource lists based in several projects and considering individual calendars, abilities and availability.
Spider has been used even to solve complex resource allocation at manufacturing plants. With the professional version you can even reorganize tasks based in availability of money or materials Saving Changes...
The topic is already old, but I believe it is always relevant. I am working in construction and found MS Project as insufficient. We are using Primavera and that is the most professional project management software I tried. However, it needs some training in order to use it propperly and get good results.
