| At a glance · IT project success depends on resource allocation and scheduling. · Resource planning and scheduling can prevent delays, improve quality and customer satisfaction, and protect margins. · Good resource planning can prevent misallocations and employee burnout. · Resource planning is a core function and requires enterprise-class resource management software. |
It may seem that planning resource allocation is purely an operational function. But it isn’t.
The success of IT projects depends on the deployment of the right people at the right time. Your technology and architectural strengths are crucial but they can be rendered ineffective if your organization fails to provide the required resources on time.
Quality of your resource planning and scheduling has far-ranging effects on your project deliveries, customer satisfaction, revenue leakage, project margins, and last but not least -employee morale and attrition.
If done well, resource planning and scheduling across various projects have several benefits.
Benefit #1 Avoids project delays and their domino effects
This is quite obvious. The inability to allocate resources on time is one of the most common reasons for delays in projects. Since project tasks have dependencies on other tasks, the non-availability of even a single resource can cause cascading effects
Benefit #2 Improves quality of project deliverables
People with skill sets that meet the requirements of tasks to be done are needed for adhering to the quality norms. Any compromise in this can lead to customer complaints and redoing of some work. Both should be prevented.
Benefit #3 Customers trust you more
Avoiding project delays and maintaining good quality improves customer satisfaction by taking away irritants. It helps in earning the trust of your customers.
Benefit #4 Reduces missed billing opportunities
When resources are not available in time, you scramble to find them. Your managers get bogged in resolving resource conflicts while your organization misses billing. Good resource planning prevents all this.
Benefit #5 Protects project margins
When resources with matching skill sets are allocated to various project tasks, you optimize your resource costs and protect project margins.
Benefit #6 Reduces wastage of highly skilled resources
Under pressure from customers, your managers may resort to using highly-skilled people for tasks that can be done with lesser-level skills. Proper resource planning helps reduce such misallocations.
Benefit #7 Prevents burnout of employees
People, who are persistently overloaded, face burnout. Proactive resource planning evens out the utilization of your people and reduces the possibility of burnout.
Benefit #8 Reduces attrition
Work that doesn’t match with skills and competencies is one of the most common causes of employee attrition. When given work that doesn’t utilize their skills fully, people get demotivated.
They start worrying about their careers and disengage from work. When they are given tasks for which they aren’t ready, they get overstressed.
Good resource planning avoids both types of mismatches that act as triggers for people to start looking for a change of jobs.
A core function
It is obvious that resource planning is not just an operational activity but it is at the core of your organization’s success and long-term viability.
Therefore you need to invest in the right kind of technology platform if you are managing 100s or 1000s of resources.
You need to invest
You need enterprise-class resource management software that integrates well with your existing software tools and provides you with unambiguous and real-time information on resources like skill set match with tasks, over or under-utilization, and emerging bottlenecks.
Contact us at [email protected] for a demo to show you what can be accomplished when it comes to resource planning and scheduling.
