This document discusses effective resource management for projects. It emphasizes that resources refer not just to people but also to money, equipment, and supplies. Quality of resources is more important than quantity, and different resources will impact projects differently based on their skills, knowledge, and experience. The document recommends first assessing resources as assets by evaluating their strengths and how they can add value. It also stresses assigning higher quality resources to more complex, risky, or critical parts of a project in order to effectively manage risks and tackle challenges. Overall, the key to good resource management is understanding your team's abilities and balancing their assignments appropriately.

1. Getting the Most Out of
Your Project Resources

2. Resources are commonly thought to mean people, but
actually they can refer to many things: money,
equipment, supplies. They all have something in
common: they are assets to your project.
There's a school of thought that when you are faced with
'Project Everest', you can climb it faster if you put more
people to work on it. Of course, the Everest metaphor is
a perfect example of why this approach is flawed.
Although tempting, adding more people to a project in
crisis is not necessarily going to help you get it back on
track.
Good resource management is about more than juggling
your staff numbers. It is about understanding who your
resources are and how to use them intelligently. It is
appreciating that in many circumstances, quality is better
for a project than quantity.

3. Assets are a better description to use here as not all
resources are equal in value. You might even think that
experience, skill and intellect are assets in themselves.
By thinking in this way, you can see straight away that
different resources are going to have a different impact
on your project.

4. Tools such as Microsoft Project will have a function
called 'leveling' resources which allows you to adjust
your resourcing levels to suit your project. You simply
take the sum total of you resource requirements and
spread them evenly across the project, and then adjust
according to the ebb and flow of when you can get
people available to work on it.
However, because resources vary in quality this
mathematically-centered approach is not always
suitable. A small team of highly experienced and skilled
engineers may be able to provide much greater progress
to a flailing project than a larger team of less
experienced engineers.

5. A more modern approach to resource management is to
first think of your resources as assets:
• What quality and quantity of assets are available to your
project?
• What are their strengths?
• What skills and knowledge do they bring to the project?
• Where can they add the most value?

6. Quality resources with a highly suitable skill set are best
assigned to the most difficult aspects of your project. So
one of your first tasks when assigning resources to your
project is to assess what major delivery points you have
and how you are going to achieve them.
In doing this, you also look at the complexity, and it is the
complexity variant which many project managers may
miss but which is vitally important; it gives you the
likelihood of a task being problematic, risky or late. What
are your most critical points on your project - your pinch
points? Which parts of your project carry the most risks?

7. This is where you can tackle the project with an
intelligent resource management approach. You look at
what resources you have and what you might be lacking.
You take advantage of the strengths you have in your
project team by assigning them to the areas where they
will add the most value. And you use your knowledge
about your resource to manage your risks.
For example, if you have a complex task and a team
that lack experience in this area, perhaps you can look at
whether you can expand your team, or bring in an
outsider with some specialist knowledge. This may cost
money. But by carrying out this assessment so early on
in your project, you can make a business case for why
you need to do this.

8. So how do you make an assessment of what value each
of your resources (or 'assets') has on a project? There
are several ways to do this. If you have worked with the
team before, this is fairly straightforward, as you will
have past experience that helps to assess strengths and
weaknesses. If you have not worked with the team
before, it may be a more difficult task.
However, you can still look at past projects this team
have completed: who was involved, how successful they
were. You can also spend time early on talking to your
team and finding out as much as you can about them.
Finding out their worries, concerns and their past
experiences will tell you a lot.

9. Good resource management is about knowing your
strengths and weaknesses on your project and facing
them head on. It is a fine balancing act to assigning your
resources where they really need to be, but if done well it
may be the difference between achieving success, or
managing a project that is fraught with problems.

10. WizIQ wishes you good
luck