Project planning is essential no matter the size or type of project you’re engaged in. From major building or municipal infrastructure projects to the implementation of a new IT environment or the development of a brand-new product, each is its own project and each needs to be planned correctly.
All projects are made up of a series of tasks and ultimately require resources—in the form of people, materials, machinery, money, etc.—in order to succeed. That’s why, no matter the size of your project, your resource management planning (i.e. the planning of the management of your people and materials) is crucial to your success.
Let’s look at what goes into a project plan and why resource management is so vital.
A project plan should consider the following areas from the very beginning:
- Scope – Setting down specific project goals and deliverables; deciding what needs to be achieved.
- Time – Predicting how long the project is likely to take; breaking the project down into a set of deliverable deadlines.
- Cost – estimating and predicting the level of cost for the project and the chance of going over budget
- Quality – ensuring the project design and plan is effective and efficient.
These are all important areas to get a sense of the size and weight of the project, as well as its goals, deliverables, and deadlines. Once underway, further critical areas need to be included in your project plan. These include:
- Budget
- Risk
- Resources
Projects, no matter the size is made up of several moving parts. That’s why it’s wise to give yourself the best chance of understanding how each moving part fits together and affects each other.
Budget
It’s important that when putting your project plan together, you have allocated enough budget to cover the costs of your project for the length of time you think it will take. It’s important to consider fixed costs, direct costs, indirect costs and variable costs. It’s also a good idea to plan contingency funds into the budget to help respond to identified risks.
Risk
Each project presents its own set of risks and as part of your planning, identifying and resolving potential risks is an important step on the road to project success. Your risk management policy should look to minimize the possibility of project failure due to seen or unforeseen risks. Resource management can play a part in this.
Resource management planning: the key to success
Resource management planning has the power to make or break your project, and so it should be given a large amount of your focus. Poor planning in this area can inadvertently cause your project to run over budget or fail to resolve risks. Therefore, it’s crucial to make sure you have planned the deployment of these resources before your project gets underway.
Tools to help or hinder
Popular project management tools can be clunky and difficult to use when it comes to resource management planning. Traditionally, the use of Microsoft Excel spreadsheets has been the go-to solution for workers trying to get a handle on resources prior to the start of a project. But Excel is a lacklustre tool for project management, and certainly does not have the level of specificity that resource management requires. It’s also a method that fails to give you enough visibility to ensure optimal planning and execution.
When you don’t have the right tools at your disposal, your resource planning can be negatively affected by lack of visibility and blind spots, information silos, and poor communication. Tools like Excel can also be too slow for the pace of projects today or struggle to handle the volume of data that current projects often produce. So, when your projects change fast, it can be a struggle to successfully realign and deploy your resources.
Tempus is the answer
However, there are powerful solutions out there designed specifically for resource management. For example, a solution like Tempus Resource is made up of sophisticated tools that make resource planning much more efficient. You can make on-the-spot decisions around your resource allocation because you always have the very latest information at your fingertips.
Tempus Resource gives you the ability to plan projects better. The solution includes:
- A browser-based platform that’s ready to use instantly
- Cutting-edge ‘what if’ analysis
- Up-to-the-minute reporting
- Intelligent modelling and forecasting
- Adding and importing data at the click of a button
If you are searching for ways to improve your resource management planning whatever the size of your project, Tempus Resource is ready and waiting to assist you right now.
To find out more about Tempus Resource and how the solution can ensure more efficient and effective project planning, schedule a demo.
