As portfolio manager, you’re responsible for communicating portfolio performance and capacity for new projects to your steering committee. You need to help them make insightful intake decisions based on accurate information. You rely on project managers for up-to-date project data and you provide them with the tools they need for aggregating project stats, managing resources, and delivering regular status reports. The steering committee approves more projects than you have capacity for. Even if you’re in the minority of PMOs that provide usable resource capacity projections, that information isn’t used. Resources are over-allocated, but you lack statistical evidence because of incomplete estimates, allocations, and very little accurate data. Projects are delayed or backlogged and you can’t determine if this issue is due to a resource shortage or an inability to estimate. Critical Insight Resource management suffers from a fundamental misconception about the availability of time. In theory, people have 40 hours/week “available.” Multiplied by the number of FTEs, this is the organization’s “potential capacity.” But in IT, much of that time is not realistically available to be allocated. It’s spent before project work is assigned – on operations and support, reactive work, and consumed by continuous partial attention that has become a daily reality for everyone in IT. Realistic resource management is about matching the true available capacity to allocation. Impact and Result Assess how resource management operates in your organization and where time is spent. Allocate project work properly and establish more stable project timelines. Develop a reasonable and manageable approximation of resource supply and demand. Tailor your resource management strategy based on your own capacity to manage the data.

6. Develop a Resource Management Strategy for the New Reality.
Reclaim project capacity with realistic resource management.
Traditional project resource management doesn’t work for IT. In theory, people have 40 hours/week “available.” But in IT, much of that time is not realistically available to be allocated. Time is spent
before project work is assigned – on operations and support, reactive work, and consumed by continuous partial attention that has become a daily reality for everyone in IT. As a result, resources are
over-allocated and over-worked, increasing stress and decreasing the quality of work. When resources are working on too many projects at once, some projects inevitably get delayed, which can
snowball into many more projects being delivered late and over budget.
Resource management suffers from a fundamental misconception about the availability of time. In theory, people have 40 hours/week “available.” Multiplied by the number of FTEs, this
is the organization’s “potential capacity.”
In IT, much of that time is not realistically available to be allocated. It’s spent before project work is assigned – on operations and support, reactive work, and consumed by continuous partial attention
that has become a daily reality for everyone in IT. Realistic Resource Management is about matching the true available capacity to allocation.
Project Portfolio Management (PPM) was conceived in the old reality. But by the time PPM software was mature enough for enterprise IT, organizations had already begun living in the
new reality of Agile project methodologies and matrix management organization.
Resource management is a repeated activity. It's not about what you can put together as a one-time snapshot. It's about what you can and will maintain every week, even during a crisis.
When you stop maintaining resource management data, it's nearly impossible to catch back up and you're usually forced to start fresh.
The most effective and sustainable improvements to resource management go beyond tracking and allocating time. Eventually organizational and even behavioral changes may be
required to make improvements. Project, portfolio, and resource managers don’t typically have the authority to make those changes but play a critical role in making the case for them, identifying
challenges and opportunities, and proposing solutions. Accurate reporting is the first step in that process

20. http://www.infotech.com/research/ss/develop-a-
resource-management-strategy-for-the-new-reality