Written by: Domonkos Végh, PMP, PMI-ATP trainer
How do we manage the resource challenges of projects at different organisational levels?
Resource management is a particular challenge for most organisations - and not just in a project environment. These pains are not a by-product of project-based operations, but they are most acute here.
The phenomena are well known: those responsible should provide the actors, expertise and material means to carry out the project, but usually there are never enough resources of the necessary skills or quality available for the time period required.
In addition, managers complain that they are constantly receiving new demands for resources, both for operational or day-to-day tasks (BAU tasks) and for projects. Balancing resources between the two areas is a major challenge for organisations, presenting each level of organisation concerned with unique problems.
In the following post, we will look at how resource management considerations can be made more viable for organisations at different levels of organisation and depending on the project profile
Benefits and distinguishable levels of organisational project resource management
Many organizations and managers are reluctant to address the issue in any meaningful way, which is understandable, as it is often a real hornets' nest to ponder the issue of resource management. It is common for the subject to be over-politicised from an organisational perspective, with the changing status quo always bringing resistance. Nevertheless, the benefits of systemically supported resource management are clear:
- More accurate and reliable planning. Bottlenecks can be identified, typical needs can be quantified and planned for, and estimates can be more realistic.
- Knowledge transfer, improving the quality of documentation. Resource management is not an exact science, there are no ready-made solutions. Even the most carefully designed system or process can have shortcomings or exceptions. Capturing lessons learned here is a key issue for learning organisations.
- Less frequent peak periods or congestion. Overwork is one of the most common burnout factors and one of the most serious root causes of turnover.
It is worth bearing in mind that resource management should be thought of at multiple organisational levels, it is not enough to address problems at project level or at the level of day-to-day operations, as these are often symptoms of systemic root causes. The challenges are different at different levels and so of course different solutions are needed, but harmonisation of levels is essential or we will only deepen the problems. How many organisational levels we can talk about is absolutely organisation-specific, but in general terms three levels of resource management planning are worth distinguishing:
- Level of organisational strategic resource planning
- Operational resource planning level
- Level of individual work organisation and capacity planning
Let's examine them in turn.
The role of project resource planning at the strategic level of the organisation
What exactly does this level mean? It involves long-term planning of human resource skills and capacity, so it also has strategic HR implications, so often it can be understood as resource planning not only for projects but also for the day-to-day running of the organisation. This blog post focuses on project resource management, so the tasks and responsibilities related to organisational HR are not specifically discussed.
At this level of planning, the aim is to ensure that current and future projects representing the strategic focus of the company can be implemented, that the necessary skills and competencies are sufficiently available, and to determine what resources and capacities are needed for upcoming projects and daily tasks.
This strategic level determines what resources need to be mobilised and what competences are missing. In addition to these, this strategic level, often but not exclusively by extending the responsibilities of project portfolio managers or PMO specialists, gathers up-to-date information from project managers on what qualifications and skills are currently needed for implementation, and also gathers information on the availability of the necessary qualified persons.
In short, strategic resource planning aims to manage resource developments and shortages, and to make optimal use of resources in the medium and long term, based on the company's objectives and project portfolio.
Factors affecting strategic resource planning: project categories
The flexibility of resource plans also depends on the type of projects the company is involved in, and the priority of the project portfolio elements for the organisation. Prioritising these projects as part of project portfolio management is a key objective. Although projects can be categorised and grouped in countless ways, we will now take a closer look at 3 very general categories with characteristic features:
- Own product or service developments from which the organisation expects to generate revenue (i.e. a market product is created),
- Client assignment type projects,
- Internal improvements and optimisation of the organisation's own operations.
Product or service development
The first category can be relatively easy to deal with, as decision-makers can act, make decisions, decide to start or stop a project without the involvement of external parties. As a result, it is relatively easy to manage spikes in capacity demand and keep project prioritisation within a rational framework. If the organisation is doing a large number of market product development, the primary capacity and resource requirements will be driven and dictated by the market environment and the needs of market actors.
Client projects
The second category is much more difficult. Customers are the primary decision makers, the performing organisation is more reactive to these changes, it is difficult to plan ahead, although trends in customer needs can be observed and tracked in most industries. That said, customers can always request changes in content, scope, stop projects. Their eventual launch depends more on the sales funnel. For example, if a lot of winning bids come in at the same time, you're in trouble. In this environment, the key skill is to manage the uncertainty factor and to coordinate project launch and sales activities in a meaningful way so that a possible slowdown in the sales process does not result in a loss of customers. Consequently, salespeople's observations and feedback on the evolving needs of the customer base are key to planning resource development, so collaboration between territories and actors is crucial. Developing handover points and information sharing between them is key.
Internal organisational improvements, optimisations
Often the most heavily treated category, these internal projects often fall to the bottom of the development list compared to the previous two categories, which are clearly revenue-generating. It is also worth noting that these projects are typically the first to be stopped when the organisation is in resource pressure.
There are many reasons for this, but often the benefits of these projects are more difficult to quantify and define the value creation beyond a few simple headlines (such as "morale will improve", "efficiency will increase", "processes will be better", etc.). Nevertheless, these projects would of course be of paramount importance to improve the competitiveness of the organisation.
Often these projects only affect small groups or departments, not the whole organisation, so this category typically involves fewer stakeholders in setting priorities and is often a more manageable category than the previous, customer project category. That said, it is of course possible that a large number of areas may have a large number of development needs at the same time and the organisation may be stretched.
In order to prioritise internal improvements and plan related resource development, decision-makers in this category should therefore review development needs that can be clearly linked to medium- and long-term strategic goals, as it is on the basis of these needs and previous goals that resource development can be planned in advance.
Our advice for project leaders: Thinking about which of the above categories best fits our project, we can already guess what typical resource challenges we will face. Taking into account the specificities of the category, we can obtain information on the resources needed for the project in advance by involving the right actors.
Operational resource planning: coordination between projects and day-to-day operational tasks
This level deals with the planning and establishment of the composition of the project teams, and ensures ongoing coordination between project managers and field managers (resource managers) to ensure the availability of staff for project work and day-to-day operational tasks.
In most organisational environments, area managers provide the project managers with the requested resources with the necessary qualifications for their projects, so they usually have the last word when it comes to allocating the necessary project resources. These environments are called matrix environments, where the project manager and the area manager are forced to share resources. These are, of course, not frictionless and conflict-free environments, and developing cooperation between the two actors is a priority.
Conflict between the needs of the project manager and the regional manager
The classic expectation of project managers is of course that regional managers approve their resource requests as soon as possible, arguing that this is the most accurate way to plan projects, which is indirectly reflected in fewer changes to the project plan. And, of course, project managers also want assurances that these approved resources will be available when they are needed.
This, in turn, creates challenges and problems for regional managers:
- The planning and resource allocation of a regional manager's own tasks can become difficult, as the capacity needs of incoming demands are often not constant.
- Often, several project managers compete for a single star resource - together with the regional manager.
- A newly received request or demand may conflict with an agreement already concluded.
- Allocating resources to both project and operational tasks often comes at the expense of productivity, on both sides.
Area managers often have to resource several project managers at the same time, and they also have to pay attention to the performance of their own area. Consequently, the resource requirements submitted must follow a precise, pre-defined process known to all involved. Our approval of resources should also be subject to an agreed, robust process and lead times. These processes must also be supported by the strategic planning level discussed earlier, so the operational and strategic levels must be linked.
Our suggestion: Try to get all stakeholders to jointly define an acceptable, fixed schedule for approving such resource requests, which can of course be deviated from in exceptional cases, subject to the agreement of the stakeholders. Agreeable deadlines and lead times will increase the level of confidence of project leaders, make the medium-term more predictable and provide greater transparency for all actors.
Individual work organisation and capacity planning - without a dedicated tool, it can only work for a while
This would in fact be the ongoing, detailed planning of project managers, planning the resources allocated to each project on a task-by-task basis. The question then becomes one of task organisation and work management - who should do what and when? The specific planning steps and process will, of course, depend to a large extent on the project methodology used and the environment. The purpose of this post is not to go into the technical implementation of resource planning, but to draw attention to general phenomena.
Regardless of the project context, project managers typically have access to team members for a limited period of time, so it is important to assign actors to specific tasks. Ideally, this should not be planned by the project leader as a lone warrior, but with the involvement of the team, or even more ideally as an empowering type of leader, relying entirely on the team. Of course there will be many errors and miscalculations, this is normal. The task here is to record and talk through lessons and experiences. In agile environments, retrospectives are the perfect opportunity to do this, and in a more classical project environment, it is worth scheduling a "lessons learned" meeting with the team at certain intervals to ensure that the experience gained is not lost.
A major challenge in knowledge transfer is the actual expenditure, the continuous documentation of the resource situation and keeping the information up to date. To see in a transparent way what progress has been made, what tasks are still to be done, how much time has been spent on which deliverables, we will certainly need an IT tool after a while. In the beginning, simpler reports, templates, common task management interfaces will work, but over time, as the need for more precise planning becomes more demanding, we will need some kind of IT system.
Our suggestion: Think of an IT solution where the scheduling tools of project managers and the work management tools of resource managers who allocate resources to daily tasks are integrated, so as to avoid over-scheduling of resources with project and/or daily tasks.
Conclusion
From the above, we can see that different resource challenges arise at different organisational levels, again there are no box-ticking solutions to alleviate organisational pain. Once again, the issue of resource management needs to be addressed by thinking systemically, by looking at different levels together.
It is an illusion to think that resource conflicts can be completely resolved in organisations, but there are plenty of ways to reduce them, as outlined above. In our view, a strong project management office (PMO), supported by senior management, is one of the most important success factors, as it can coordinate and oversee resource planning activities at different levels, among many other possible tasks.
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