Resource Management Processes by Stage
Here we set out stages of a typical Project lifecycle and describe how Resource Management features fit into these. Your own stages and related process details may be different, but this high-level explanation will illustrate how the features in the system work together.
Please also see this article for a view of the financial investment management perspective, integrated with Resource Management for the purpose of resource costing.
Concept Stage
When developing the business case for the project, we are looking to rapidly create a high-level resource demand profile.
This includes:
- Creating the Resource Demand register, i.e. a list of resource roles we will need for the project with effort estimates over time (days per month)
- Prioritising the Project and modelling scenarios in combination with other Project requests to decide if and when to start the Project, in light of available resources.
- Potentially moving the start date of the Project to a time when resources and investment are available to commence delivery (with resource and investment forecasts rescheduled accordingly – see The Project 'Time Window').
Initiation Stage
At this stage we will be creating the project team, with named Team Members allocated to the project to fulfil the defined roles.
This includes:
- Refining the Resource Demand register by adding skills requirements and modifying resource effort estimates if required.
- Submitting resource requests to Resource Approvers.
- Resource Approvers will identify named Team Members with suitable availability and skills match, put their names against the request and approve the days these individuals may work on the project (see Resource Approval).
- Recording of actual effort may start at this stage (submitted via Timesheets or entered as Actual days in the project).
Execution Stage
During Project delivery, resource management related activities will include:
- Regular resource reviews involving relevant stakeholders using resource reporting to identify near term and long term resource issues (i.e. over- or under-utilisation) across the portfolio.
- Dealing with changing requirements, i.e. adding additional Resource Demand rows, moving or modifying previous forecast figures, and taking these through the Resource Approval process.
- Continued recording of actuals via timesheets or direct entry into the project.
Supporting Processes
Administrative support processes are mainly about continuously maintaining the resource pool of team members. This involves:
- Onboarding new Team Members
- Dealing with leavers
- Maintaining Team Member capacity to reflect holidays and other variations
- Maintaining day rates
- Dealing with replacement of resources through bulk transfers
Common Variations
The above illustration of typical processes will see many variations in different environments e.g.
- Not deploying system features such as Timesheets, Portfolio Modelling or Skills
- Not costing resources (usually internal resources seen as a fixed cost)
- Allowing project owners to add named Team Members to their project without going through the approval process