Anticipating Source Overloads

Following having a detailed plan has been developed for a project, a troubling question remains to be answered: Will the resources required to execute the project according to plan be accessible when needed? In the process of growing each project schedule, the standard availability of resources should have been taken into consideration when activity stays were estimated. However, this estimating process does not make sure the total workload on an useful resource (person or functional group) from all projects and non-project assignments will not likely go beyond the availability of that resource during any future period. When resource overloads occur, personnel are exposed to unnecessary stress, and project activities fall lurking behind schedule. The quality of the deliverables produced is also likely to go through. Thus, the objective of resource planning is to anticipate source overloads, to enable them to be fixed for the good thing about both the people and the projects.

The Range of Approaches to Anticipating Source Overloads

The approach used to the task of wanting specific resource overloads in specific future periods will depend on after the quantity of simultaneous tasks undertaken by the corporation and the extent to which people are distributed across multiple projects.
In the event the organization undertakes only a really small number of assignments at one time, or if each person is focused on work on only one or two tasks at the same time, a "short-cut approach" may be employed. The easiest and probably most effective short-cut approach is to:

Give each person a duplicate of the newly-developed project schedule exhibiting only those activities in which that person will be involved, and
Inquire the individual to check the schedule against their personal calendar and other work commitments (including the plans for the few other projects in which they could be involved) and report any evident conflicts.
A person may realize for the first time that, during a week which is three months in the future, they are slated to work on five major activities in two different projects, while planning their operating budget get for another fiscal 12 months and taking part in a two-day training program. Clearly, "something's got to give! very well The key to this approach is the reality each person is given the ability and the responsibility to identify their own overloads.

However, if the business shares resources (again, individuals or groups) across a substantial number of simultaneous tasks, short-cut approaches to the anticipation of resource overloads are inadequate. A "comprehensive approach" is necessary. To be effective the comprehensive procedure must capture the work associated with all jobs in which the employees are involved. Fortunately, most popular project management software systems support the complete approach as described in the next section.

The Comprehensive Method to Anticipating Source Overloads

The critical first step to the complete approach is called "resource loading, " and it occurs during the planning process for each and every new task. For every single activity in the project schedule, the volume of each resource required to perform the activity (typically measured in staff-hours for personnel resources) is estimated and entered into the project management software system. Thus, we would approximate that an activity called "Develop computer code" should require about 30 staff-hours of Linda Baker's as well as 120 staff-hours of work from a group called "Computer Programmers. " As the estimates are fastened to the activities, the project management software has the ability to determine when the resources will be needed based on the scheduled start and completion dates for the activities. In other words, we've a time-phased output of resource requirements or workload for each and every resource (e. g., Linda Baker and the pc Programmers). That is also necessary and possible to estimate and enter resource requirements for project-level work (such as project management) and non-project work (that is, the continuing background process workload) for every single resource.

The next step is performed regularly and must be central at the project-portfolio level, rather than being performed at the project level. For each resource, the time-phased resource requirements are summed across all tasks (as well as the non-project workload) within the project management software system. The resulting "resource profiles" can show up in graphical and/or tabular format. By comparing the overall work projection for each and every resource with the resource's planned availableness, overloads during specific future periods become obvious.

The above description makes the process sound easier than it truly is. Challenges include:

Growing, maintaining, and applying on all projects standard ways of identifying organizational resources.
? Developing the capacity, confidence, and discipline to estimate useful resource requirements for a lot of activities on all projects.
Establishing the centralized infrastructure that works with the accumulation and evaluation of total resource requirements across all projects.