Software project resources

One of the biggest challenges of project resource management is maximizing billable or strategic utilization without overloading resources on projects. Often, project managers assign more tasks to a selected few employees because they have been counted upon in the past to deliver results.

This overloading can lead to stress, burnout and build team animosity among team members. The Solution: Resource management software provides foresight into strategic, billable, and non-billable utilization. Uniformly distributing critical resources across all projects instead of assigning them to a high-priority one controls costs and improves ROI. In a dynamic business environment, project managers often face resource shortages.

Sudden changes in project scope, client requirements, or global crises like the current COVID pandemic affect resource supply. It is especially challenging in a multi-project environment, where resource scarcity affects several projects on the boil. Suppose there is a niche skill requirement to kickstart a project. As these resources possess highly specialized skills, they are not readily available in the market. The Solution: Using a multidimensional scheduler , project managers can identify a niche resource within the enterprise.

Implementing an out-rotation and backfill strategy will help start the new project without disrupting other existing projects. What-if analysis allows you to build and simulate various scenarios within the given constraints to arrive at the best outcome. In a project-based business, miscommunication between the sales and delivery teams can have a spiraling effect on your projects, resulting in low client satisfaction.

Once the sales team wins an opportunity, the delivery team takes ownership and is responsible for adhering to the commitment. However, while achieving the sales targets, the sales team sometimes fails to involve the delivery team before signing the deal.

As a result, the delivery team struggles with eleventh-hour resource allocations to meet the deliverables. The solution: Effective resource management strategy includes forecasting and planning pipeline project requirements in advance. Accordingly, the sales team negotiates with the client stating the revised delivery commitments, if any, and if both parties agree, the deal is signed.

For every successful project, the journey starts with creating an efficient project resource plan. Using resource management solutions, project managers can plan, organize, and manage the project resources effectively. Suppose a bridge construction project will start two months from now.

As resources are critical drivers of project success, the project manager needs to create an efficient project resource plan. Here are the essential steps to formulate one:. Before starting the project, it is critical to define resource requirements. The project manager identifies the type and quantity of resources.

Depending on the resource type, grades or skills can also be determined. Similarly, the skills, roles, experience, etc. Once the resource estimation is complete, the project manager informs the concerned stakeholders and takes their concurrence. Although done initially, one must note that resources can be requested in a staggered manner, depending on the project requirement. Once resource estimation is completed, the project manager requests the resource manager for fulfillment.

An automated resource requesting helps streamline the process. Modern resource management solutions allow project managers to specify the required skills, experience, qualifications, cost, and project timelines. This request reaches the inbox of the resource manager in charge, who starts planning for the same. The whole process is documented and remains auditable, which eliminates any process-related confusion or conflicts.

After receiving the resource request from the project manager, the resource manager starts planning for fulfillment. The resource manager looks into all the resources matching the requirements across the enterprise.

Demand capacity planning helps to identify and estimate the excesses or shortfalls accurately. After identifying the excesses or shortages, the resource manager in charge can apply appropriate treatments to bridge the capacity gap. If there is an excess, adjusting project timelines, training, reskilling , or selling excess capacity helps bridge the gap.

Employees can be encouraged to acquire more skills. People on the bench and project vacancy reports enable resource managers to identify available employees. If the resources match the minimum qualification criteria, learning new skills with shadowing on-the-job training opportunities increases billability. Studies have shown that employees are engaged and more productive if they are fully empowered to carry out their responsibilities.

Since human resources are essential assets for most organizations, involving them in choosing projects of interest boosts productivity. They are motivated and hence feel responsible for accomplishing their respective tasks.

Resource managers can publish open positions within the resource management system. Every relevant resource matching the role and belonging to the required organization structure like the team, department, location, etc.

Accordingly, they can revert to the open positions and show their interest in joining the project team. The resource manager in charge can take appropriate action in selecting the ideal resource pool. The project manager can either approve all recommended resources or request changing few team members. Accordingly, the resource managers start looking for more suitable resources befitting the requirements. The entire process repeats till both the concerned stakeholders agree on the proposal.

The project manager then approves the mutually agreed resources, and the resource manager starts the allocation process. In case there is a performance issue with a particular resource, the project manager can roll the person off and ask for a replacement during the project life-cycle.

At this stage, the project manager assigns various tasks to the selected resources. While scheduling team members, the project manager ensures that no one is under or overallocated.

The project manager allows a buffer for any potential risks that can affect resource availability and complete projects with fewer members. Resource optimization techniques help project managers to complete deliverables with minimal obstruction.

They are:. Apart from optimizing resources across projects, the project manager also ensures profitability and team productivity. Using forecasting analytics and reports inbuilt on resource management solutions, project managers can enhance profitable resource utilization. To sum up, project resource management is a skill set that every project manager must master, and with the right tools and techniques, it is easily achievable.

Resource management solution allows planning, scheduling, and allocating resources effectively to projects while maximizing their profitable utilization. In a nutshell, it helps meet your project goals using your resources intelligently. SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solution for managing your enterprise resources effectively and efficiently.

With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has created its global presence across 50 countries and helped more than customers achieve their business goals.

SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software that is customizable as per business requirements. It should be absolutely tailored to every project. While this category is not essential to software project management, it does add some bling, thus creating an atmosphere of productivity and innovation.

The work environment should not be treated lightly. Do at least take into consideration ergonomics and humane living conditions, if you are not that much into feng shui. Resource Planning Steps So, now you have your resource list. List the necessary resources for every task, milestone, or phase of the project as detailed as possible. You can use a bullet list or different diagramming methods to analyze your checklist: Consider Time. How many hours would one specific task take?

When is the deadline? Are there any upcoming milestones? What about holidays that might inevitably slow down or stall the project. What about your human resources : who is in charge of which task? Are they full-time workers, freelancers, contractor, part-timers? Do they have specific needs to help them do their job properly?

Is the workload manageable? Good feedback is essential, since you can always hire someone to help lessen the workload, rather than overwork one poor employee, thus leading to job dissatisfaction, overwork, burnout, and loss of productivity. This also includes subscription plans, apps, software, and so on.

Always take into consideration the ethical use of your equipment. There is a reason why people stopped using typewriters when computers were invented. While having the most cutting-edge technology and gadgets on the market, remember to constantly update what you own. Software project management also needs projectors, printers, scanners, phones, and so on.

Consider a list of consumable materials, such as markers, paper, and so on. Schedule the dates along with your resources on a timeline, calendar, or Gantt chart. November 7, Related Posts. The managers estimate efforts in terms of personnel requirement and man-hour required to produce the software. For effort estimation software size should be known. Once size and efforts are estimated, the time required to produce the software can be estimated. Efforts required is segregated into sub categories as per the requirement specifications and interdependency of various components of software.

The tasks are scheduled on day-to-day basis or in calendar months. The sum of time required to complete all tasks in hours or days is the total time invested to complete the project. This might be considered as the most difficult of all because it depends on more elements than any of the previous ones. For estimating project cost, it is required to consider -. We discussed various parameters involving project estimation such as size, effort, time and cost. This technique uses empirically derived formulae to make estimation.

This model is made by Lawrence H. Putnam model maps time and efforts required with software size. It divides the software product into three categories of software: organic, semi-detached and embedded.

Project Scheduling in a project refers to roadmap of all activities to be done with specified order and within time slot allotted to each activity. Project managers tend to define various tasks, and project milestones and arrange them keeping various factors in mind. They look for tasks lie in critical path in the schedule, which are necessary to complete in specific manner because of task interdependency and strictly within the time allocated.

Arrangement of tasks which lies out of critical path are less likely to impact over all schedule of the project. For scheduling a project, it is necessary to -. All elements used to develop a software product may be assumed as resource for that project. This may include human resource, productive tools and software libraries. The resources are available in limited quantity and stay in the organization as a pool of assets.

The shortage of resources hampers the development of project and it can lag behind the schedule. Allocating extra resources increases development cost in the end.

It is therefore necessary to estimate and allocate adequate resources for the project. Risk management involves all activities pertaining to identification, analyzing and making provision for predictable and non-predictable risks in the project.

Risk may include the following:. Execution needs monitoring in order to check whether everything is going according to the plan. Monitoring is observing to check the probability of risk and taking measures to address the risk or report the status of various tasks. Effective communication plays vital role in the success of a project. It bridges gaps between client and the organization, among the team members as well as other stake holders in the project such as hardware suppliers.

Communication can be oral or written. Communication management process may have the following steps:. Configuration management is a process of tracking and controlling the changes in software in terms of the requirements, design, functions and development of the product. Generally, once the SRS is finalized there is less chance of requirement of changes from user.

If they occur, the changes are addressed only with prior approval of higher management, as there is a possibility of cost and time overrun.