Effective project resource management with FlexiProject
Currently, organizations are executing an increasing number of projects each year, which consequently involves allocating more human and material resources to these projects. It is also becoming more common for companies to have many needs and ideas for project implementation, but in most cases, the limitation is the availability of human resources to carry them out. Being aware of these limitations, we decided to add a new module for managing project resources in the FlexiProject system. It is worth noting that proper planning of resource engagement in individual projects and specific tasks is a labor-intensive process. However, if done correctly, there is a high probability that the effectiveness of project resource management in the company will significantly increase.
Why it is worth planning and managing resource use in projects?
While promoting the FlexiProject system in the market, we speak with dozens of different organizations each month that are looking for a good program for managing project resources. The most common needs expressed by organizations from various industries in this area are as follows:
- We can’t absorb more projects for implementation – The increasing number of projects carried out in companies causes people to, in a sense, “resist” getting involved in another project.
- Project planning over time – Without seeing the level of resource engagement, it is difficult to create a reasonable project map.
- Effective use of bottleneck resources – Employees from certain departments, such as IT, are often bottlenecks in many projects, and these resources need to be particularly planned for.
- Project cost management – In many companies, monitoring and planning resource usage in terms of their impact on project costs is required.
Managing project resources in the FlexiProject program
Understanding the needs of organizations in terms of planning and monitoring resource utilization, FlexiProject decided to build a dedicated module that offers a range of possibilities.
The following illustration shows the level of resource workload in a specific month. It clearly highlights resources that have been allocated more hours for projects than their availability, as well as those that can take on additional tasks. In the FlexiProject program, you can easily change the timescale for observing the resource workload in the company. It is also easy to display the resource workload for, for example, the next six months. With this information at hand, companies can strategically plan resource usage even over a one-year horizon.
How are individual employees overloaded?
When we launch a new project and want to create a project team, it’s important to know how each potential team member is currently burdened with tasks from other projects. This information is easily available in the FlexiProject system, as shown in the illustration below. Just like at the global level, we can also observe the planned workload of each employee over different time horizons.
For the system to also show resource overloading, it must offer the ability to input employees’ availability for project work, their leaves, vacations, etc.
How to plan resource workload on a specific project?
When planning resources on a project, a column named “allocation” appears. When adding a new task to the project, we can immediately estimate the number of hours we want to allocate to complete this task. At this stage, we don’t need to specify who will do it, but we already have an estimate of the time required.
Only when we assign specific performers to the task and specify the start and end dates, will the system distribute the estimated workload evenly across the assigned individuals. Of course, the project manager can manually adjust what the system automatically calculates, offering great flexibility in resource usage.
A very valuable feature of the FlexiProject system is the ability to dynamically change the level of resource workload over time when the project and task timelines change.
In practice, projects often do not proceed exactly as planned. Therefore, the system must reflect the updated distribution of project resource workloads over time. This functionality is shown in the illustration below, where at the top of the screen is a Gantt chart for the project, and below it is the workload of the project team members:
Streamlining project resource management with FlexiProject for improved efficiency and employee satisfaction
This article demonstrates how complex managing project resources can be and how difficult it is to do effectively without professional tools. The FlexiProject system allows for effective resource management in the company. Despite the labor-intensive nature of managing project resources, it offers several benefits. The company can better distribute projects over time, thereby improving employee work comfort, satisfaction, and engagement.
