ENHANCING EFFICIENCY THROUGH MANAGEMENT OF WORKLOAD & RESOURCES

1. ENHANCING EFFICIENCY
THROUGH MANAGEMENT OF
WORKLOAD & RESOURCES

2. WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
• Managing resources efficiently is a crucial step of a successful project
• It promotes transparency and seamless collaboration
• By planning and managing your resources will get clear overview and
control of your project
• Help in planning future projects even better

3. PLAN YOUR RESOURCES

4. 1. DEFINE PRIORITY
• Breakdown project into tasks to plan resources from smallest to
largest

5. 2. ADD DUE DATES
• Adding due dates along with priority status will help your team
manage their time better.

6. 3. ESTIMATE TIME
• Some tasks take longer time than others
• Adding time will help to allocate resources better

7. DISTRIBUTE WORK EFFICIENTLY

8. ALLOCATE PHYSICAL RESOURCES

9. TRACK PROGRESS & TIME SPENT

10. WORKLOAD MANAGMENT

11. WORKLOAD MANAGMENT
• Workload management is a multi step process that efficiently plans,
schedules and distributes work across your team. It optimizes how
work is assigned and helps keep teams and projects on track
• To ensure successful project you must plan in detail before any actual
work begins
• Workload management provides a realistic plan (with prioritized tasks
and attainable deadlines) that helps you deliver projects on time and
within budget.

12. FACTORS
• Many factors contribute to a successful project. Workload
management provides a framework and proven process to address
these, including:
• Utilizing resources effectively
• Optimizing project schedules
• Managing time and workload expectations
• Keeping projects on track and within budget

13. ADVANTAGES
• Workload management helps you prioritize tasks more efficiently,
improve the balance of work across your team, and create more
accurate project schedules. As a result, your team has the capacity
and confidence to deliver quality work.
• When team members are overallocated, it's hard for them to do their
best work. Constantly feeling under pressure and tied to unrealistic
deadlines can ratchet up the stress levels and lead to burnout.

14. • Tired employees with an unbalanced workload are less likely to
finish work and more likely to be playing catch-up.

15. Makes the best use of limited
resources
• Whether you are a stocker filling shelves at a supermarket or a
web developer fixing bugs in code, your productivity is finite.
There is only so much a person can accomplish in one day
before they grow tired and their effectiveness wanes.

16. Distributes work fairly
• Team workload management is essential for the fair and equitable
distribution of work. The most efficient workers will likely be involved
in multiple projects during workload planning. That presents a golden
opportunity for others on the team to prove themselves. The best
way to create balance is by giving team members tasks matching their
skills and capacity—which is easier with workload management.

17. Reduces employee turnover and improves
work-life balance
• Effective team workload management reduces human error and
saves your company money at the organizational level. It also
increases employee retention, as people are happier when they
are not overworked and under pressure. Just ask anyone who
has set boundaries for a healthy work-life balance.

18. How to build an effective workload
management process

19. Step 1: Create a work breakdown
structure
• Any successful project manager will tell you that it is crucial to
determine the project tasks and deliverables your client expects
beforehand. This lets you know what specific tasks to tackle and how
long your team needs to complete each one.
• The weapon of choice for project managers at this stage is the work
breakdown structure (WBS).
• You can use a WBS to visualize project tasks, map each process step,
and create deadlines for multiple tasks.

20. Step 2: Check your team's capacity
• Capacity planning is critical to team workload management. It
enables you to identify if an employee can take on a new project or if
their schedule is already full.
• Capacity is not only impacted by planned work but also by set
working hours and time off.

21. Step 3: Assign tasks to team members
based on skill, availability, and capacity
• If you have the capacity to take the project on, it's time to assign
tasks to team members with the right skills.
• Efficient resource allocation is hard work. So while it might be
tempting to assign your best team member to the most
important tasks (especially if they have trouble saying no), it's
not good for anyone in the long run.

22. a. Share dependencies with your team
• It's essential to identify and track all project dependencies, so
team members know what tasks they need to do and when to
do them. Are there tasks that have subtasks? What are the
tasks that can't start before another is finished first?
• Sharing dependencies helps your team avoid bottlenecks and
lets them see where they fit within the bigger picture.

23. b.Involve your team members
• It's easy to put a deadline on a task and walk away thinking
everything will get done in time. Asking your team if their
workloads can be cleared within the set times ensures they
don't feel the tasks are a burden and helps avoid missed
deadlines.

24. Step 4: Monitor schedules and project
progress
• Finally, always keep an eye on employee performance and be
willing to change things up if necessary.
• Monitoring employee workload and utilization rates in real time
can help flag any issues and avoid burnout. For example, if you
track your team's utilization rates and notice someone above
80%, you can quickly take action and reassign some tasks to
someone else.

25. • Difficulties with workloads might not always be obvious, so you
should check in on your team members through:
• 1:1 meetings
• Async updates
• Daily stand-ups
• Status reports
• Remember that giving instructions is good, but sometimes it's
not enough. Check in regularly to see that tasks are being
carried out, but be sure to avoid micromanaging. Focus on
learning about progress and avoid jumping in to do things
yourself.

26. • Whether a job is done well (or not), providing feedback to your
team after they're finished is valuable. Point out the areas they
can improve on and praise their good effort.

27. Tips for managing workloads more
effectively

28. Help team members prioritize
tasks
• New research from Maryam Kouchaki, an associate professor
of management and organizations at Northwestern University,
finds that we are more likely to complete tasks that seem urgent
(e.g., replying to a Slack message) rather than important ones
(e.g., fixing a bug in software). To avoid cherrypicking while
working on multiple projects, you can teach your team members
to use the Eisenhower matrix.

29. • To create your matrix, categorize your tasks into four subsets:
• Important & urgent tasks like writing a report that's due
tomorrow
• Important & not urgent tasks like asking for a status update from
the product manager
• Unimportant & urgent tasks like reading emails
• Unimportant & not urgent tasks like scrolling through social
media

31. Accommodate different styles
• Another fundamental part of managing workloads is recognizing
that everyone works differently.
• Some of your team might want to work in time blocks. Others
may like to knock out complex tasks in the morning and leave
their afternoons free for meetings and emails. Try to create work
schedules that embrace what suits each team member best.

32. Advocate for your team
• Sometimes workloads get unmanageable, especially with
expanding scopes and short deadlines. Team members can
hack their way with productivity techniques, but managers still
have a role to play.
• Step in to protect your team from extra tasks and unnecessary
meetings when needed. You can also help by drawing
stakeholders' attention to problems like short timelines or
requesting more resources on a project.

33. Track hours to validate capacity and
plans
• The only way to know how your team's time is spent is to track it!
• Insights from time tracking will help you understand project
burndown rates, estimated vs. actual time, and how to plan more
effectively for future projects. You'll be able to schedule workloads
knowing how long tasks actually take at a team or individual level.