« Four Principles for Jump-starting Performance Improvement - A Healthy View of Numbers
How to Write a Project Charter - Part 1 »

Effective Resource Management

May 9, 2008 | Author: admin | Filed under: HR Management

Effective Resource Management
By Jorge Dominguez

Managing project human resources, the single most critical resource, is one of the most difficult tasks PMs have. Shared resources, or resources of either a functional type of organization or a weak or balanced matrix organization, compound the already complex task since these types of organizations have the least control of resources.

This serious challenge is more evident when resources are lined up for simultaneous and/or successive projects; the dreaded resource allocation syndrome. Here are the top 5 challenges I believe PMs face today in managing resources:

  • Geographically dispersed project teams
  • Over booked and mismanaged resources
  • The constraint of not having resources available when needed
  • Resources working on lower priority projects
  • Resources working on lower priority tasks

One way to overcome these challenges is by having a PMO group with the right enterprise project management system tool. Their enterprise view of resource allocation, improves the odds of knowing what the resources are working on and when they will become available thus avoiding bottlenecks. Without the coordination of a PMO, managers make decisions in isolation from the big picture.

The right tool must have real-time resource allocation and assignment and long-term staff planning. This visibility is critical to having the resource at the right time for the right project and working on the higher priority tasks.

The supply chain management (also called logistics) discipline has managed to put in place a process in which resources of all kinds are efficiently used at the time they are needed across multiple locations.

Maybe the project management profession should look closely at how supply chain management has resolved the challenge to ensure resources arrive as required and just in time. After all, all the PM wants is that the project is completed within the defined scope, cost and time. Don’t you think so…? Well, I do

Jorge Dominguez, PMP®

http://www.Expiriance.com

Share this article:
  • StumbleUpon
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati
  • Reddit
  • YahooMyWeb
  • blogmarks

    • This entry was posted on Friday, May 9th, 2008 and is filed under HR Management. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

    1 person has left a comment

    Thanks George. I agree a good shared tool and information flow helps a lot.

    I focus on matrix organizations, do you know of any tools that are able to cope with the competing priorities and constant changes inherent in a matrix, where people often have other reporting lines and priorities as well as their project activities?

    Traditional tools may focus only on the project activity itself and fail to allow for other influences on people’s time.

    I’ve not come across a solution to this - any ideas?

    Kevan Hall wrote on May 12, 2008 - 9:43 am | Visit Link

    feel free to leave a comment

    Comment Guidelines: Basic XHTML is allowed (a href, strong, em, code). All line breaks and paragraphs are automatically generated. Off-topic or inappropriate comments will be edited or deleted. Email addresses will never be published. Keep it PG-13 people!

    XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <code> <em> <i> <strike> <strong>

    All fields marked with " * " are required.

    Project Management Categories