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Why Resource Management is important in Agile Methodology

April 19, 2023 | By Samantha Varner

There is a pervasive perception within the Agile community that if a company is using the Agile methodology, then they do not need to do resource planning. However, Agile delivery and resource planning should not be treated as separate items. To the contrary, any organization taking advantage of Agile delivery must plan for team constraints and conduct high-level planning. Agile methodologies emphasize flexibility, adaptability, and collaboration among team members to achieve organizational initiatives.

Resource planning in Agile involves allocating and assigning people, teams, and their skills to ensure a smooth project execution and successful product and project delivery. These reasons are why resource planning is crucial in Agile delivery:

  • Efficient Resource Allocation: Capacity planning helps ART delivery leaders assign teams and skills to the right tasks at the right time. It enables teams to optimize the use of their people, preventing overallocation or underutilization of key skills. Good resource planning ensures that team members have the necessary skills, expertise, and capacity to complete their tasks, reducing delays and maximizing productivity.
  • Improved Team Collaboration: Agile methodologies emphasize teamwork and collaboration. Resource planning facilitates better collaboration among team members by allowing additional people to support team members in completing tasks. It allows for identifying bottlenecks early and enables delivery leaders to reduce resource constraints and redistribute tasks as needed.
  • Realistic Time Management: Resource planning helps Agile teams create realistic timelines and budgets. It allows the team to assess the availability of resources and estimate the effort each sprint will take. This pre-planning enables teams to set achievable timelines, avoiding over-commitment and burnt-out people.
  • Adaptability to Changing Requirements: Agile is known for its flexibility and adaptability to changing project needs and product requirements. Resource planning enables Agile teams to respond to changes in project scope or priorities by reallocating resources accordingly. It allows teams to make informed decisions about resource assignments based on project needs, ensuring resources are set up to deliver the most value.
  • Risk Mitigation: Resource planning helps identify potential resource risks early in the project. For example, if projects and tasks are moved without consulting a resource plan, the team is at risk of being overallocated or underutilized. Resource planning can help identify the issue and allow leaders to take corrective action like reprioritizing work and timelines or bringing in new team members.

When businesses are looking to maximize resource management and capacity planning at a resource level, it’s important to find a solution that can help a business continuously align work, teams, people, and strategy to accelerate Agile delivery at scale, in addition to traditional waterfall and hybrid portfolio delivery. In a virtual production environment, product, portfolio, and ART delivery leaders can easily and interactively design future portfolio flow that speeds strategic outcomes and mitigates delivery and talent retention risks. Continuously and confidently aligning resource capacity and costs to changing business conditions significantly enhances business agility.

ProSymmetry, a global leader in resource portfolio management and makers of the purpose-built resource management solution Tempus Resource, has been named a Scaled Agile Platform Partner by Scaled Agile, Inc. Companies who are Scaled Agile Platform Partners have organizational expertise in delivering the Scaled Agile Framework® products and services to help customers improve business agility. Tempus brings full transparency to how resource capacity aligns with strategic delivery across an entire portfolio. Tempus enables users to leverage the best practices of SAFe® capacity planning to accelerate portfolio value flow.

Resource planners can learn more about how capacity planning creates actionable scaled Agile transparency, and how Tempus can help with Agile delivery at www.youtube.com/prosymmetry.

ProSymmetry, a global leader in resource portfolio management, provides resource management solutions to large enterprises including many Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies with its proprietary platform Tempus Resource. Tempus Resource, recently named in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Adaptive Project Management and Reporting, is a purpose-built resource forecasting and capacity planning solution for strategic business decisions. With capabilities including bulk resource forecasting, skills and talent management, portfolio and resource capacity reporting and interactive scenario planning and what-if analysis, Tempus gives organizations actionable intelligence and cutting-edge analytics.

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