Proper supervision of the skills and plans of the workforce is the essence of today’s knowledge-intensive enterprise. How can you obtain, structure, and analyze your resource management information? What proven observations will assist you to use your faculty effectively and streamline resource deployment?
In Resource management provocation are the top concern facing organizations today, according to project management research. Since then, RM has proved to be a persistent area of concern. In the 2012 State of the PMO study, resource management is still among the top five biggest challenges for responding companies. Because resource shortages and clashes can plague your talent to deliver, understanding the resource capacity and skill sets that exist within your organization gives you the ability to steadily demand and relate the exact resources at the right time. This ability can make the difference between successfully executing strategy and failing — failing to meet deadlines, deliver products and facilities with the preferred quality, or assist the interests of shareholders and stakeholders. In fact, further research has shown that there is a strong correlation between the level of resource management maturity and overall organizational performance.
Top 10 Resource Management Challenges
1. Resource capacity planning is poor
2. Resource risks are not assessed
3. Not enough appropriately skilled resources
4. Resource use is not optimized
5. Schedules/deadlines are unrealistic
6. Resources are assigned inconsistently
7. Too many unplanned requests for resources
8. Resource utilization is poorly documented
9. Shifting resources to respond to problems
10. The transition process for resources is inadequate
That’s the good news. The ruthless news is that resource management adulthood is low in organizations. 74.4% of organizations are at maturity level 1 or 2 according to this study. Organizations practice significant challenges in all constituents of resource management, but mostly in resource planning and assessing; they even are unsuccessful to practice many of the resource management principles noted by the Project Management Institute.
To compound the problem, there is a significant disconnect between decision-makers who adopt that there are sufficient resources for all projects when there often are not. In fact, analyzing the aspects that set the worst performer separately, we discover that the glitches challenging them are symbols that a decent, simple project management culture has not been established:
A. Too many unplanned requests
B. Unrealistic schedules and budgets
C. Scope creep
D. Several pet projects hurdle the queue
E. Poorly defined deliverables
This lack of acceptance of and provision for project management fundamentals is almost indeed the reason that the one stage many companies depend on to advance their resource management capabilities — that of applying associated software tools — often proves to be a disappointment. Almost half (47.9%) of all organizations use automated information systems to assist in resource management functions; but those who do are unexcited in their justification of the importance of those systems. Of those who used these systems, nearly half (47.3%) assumed they did not exactly calculate resource forecasts. More than half (55.0%) said their supervisors did not use the structures consistently or effectively.
PMO in Refining Resource Management
The high-performance organizations in the Resource Challenge those that nick in the top 25% are at a significantly higher level of resource management maturity than low-performing organizations. But it is not simply the difficulty of consistently performing the resource management standards that makes the transformation. Successful establishments also display some operational and process features that sustain good resource management.
These characteristics include:
The organization has a strong, effective project management office (PMO).
Operative portfolio broadcasting capability survives.
Resources understand project management practices.
Stakeholder roles/responsibilities are clearly defined.
Let’s examine how companies can quickly move towards modeling these four key characteristics.
The important Role of the PMO in Refining Resource Management
The major organizational characteristic on the beyond list sets the stage. Research has shown that organizations with mature Project Management Offices (PMOs) are able to address a wide range of business problems more effectively, from executing corporate strategy and implementing project administration methodology; to handling the project portfolio and steadiness resources across a wide range of conflicting initiatives. In fact, in order to get a firm to manage the facts and practices that can improve resource management, the PMO is essential. For a PMO, four exactly address concerns to Resource Management:
1. Developer, documenter, and repository of a standard methodology: a consistent set of tools and processes for projects.
2. Resource evaluator: based on experience from previous projects, the PMO can validate business assumptions about projects as to time and costs, and people can also assist as a source of data on cross-functional project source conflicts or synergies.
3. A competency center: providing mentoring and training across the organization.
4. Project management consulting center: providing a seat of governing responsibility for project management; and perhaps staffing projects with project managers or deploying them as professionals.
The association between positioning these characteristics of a PMO and their influence on business performance has been validated in our biennial State of the PMO reports, 2008 – 2012. Findings have shown that mature PMOs that drilled authority above an extensive range of resource issues were associated with improved organizational performance.
There are 3 approaches that mostly affect resource management where the Project Management Office can take the prime:
Strategy #1: Resource management within the PMO
Strategy #2: Project portfolio managing, which ropes resource management adulthood
Strategy #3: Standardizing project management culture and results through training and methodologies.
I hope you got some input, on how PMO is important in Resource Management from this article.
About Author:
Deepak Ramamurthy is Resource Manager at Chimera Technologies, his hobby is traveling.