Are you struggling with double booking of resources, resulting in scheduling conflicts?
Has the overloading of resources severely compromised the quality of project deliverables?
Unable to start a project on time due to a lack of visibility into resource schedules?
If you are facing the challenges mentioned above, you need to rethink how to plan your resources for the project.
Resource availability is critical in driving the success of project planning. Thus, understanding resource availability is essential for managers to effectively plan, allocate, and utilize resources throughout the project lifecycle.
To find and allocate the right resources, one must extensively analyze the workforce across the enterprise.
However, it is not as easy as it sounds. The lack of centralized resource visibility, absence of up-to-date skill matrix, misalignment in resource and project calendar, etc., makes this process more daunting.
Therefore, managers need to adopt appropriate measures and tools to streamline the tracking of resource availability for successful project initiation and delivery.
In this blog, we’ll explore the nuances of resource availability within project management.
Let’s take a deep dive into the definition of resource availability.
What is Resource Availability?
Resource availability refers to the amount and type of resources that are currently accessible for a particular task or project. This includes factors such as the number of staff members, the quantity of equipment, etc.
Resource availability provides an overview of the resources’ schedule and a clear picture of who’s available to take up the tasks. A resource can either be partially or fully available and must be utilized to their total capacity. Based on this information, managers can plan and allocate the project tasks in advance, avoiding last-minute hiccups.
When project managers do not have insights into resources available for the work, they might overload a resource. In worst-case scenarios, they might even risk booking the staff who lack the skills to accomplish the tasks.
Moreover, important parameters like resource capacity and demand, skill gaps, and optimal utilization scales are all directly impacted by resource availability.
Here is a brief description of each of these parameters:
- Resource demand: Number of resources required to complete a given project. It can only be fulfilled when you have the right number of resources available at your disposal.
- Resource capacity: Available resources with matching skillsets in your organization to take up the appropriate project tasks.
- Skill gap: The difference between the project demand and capacity is the skill gap.
- Optimal utilization scale: The efficient and productive use of resources and their skills constitutes the optimal utilization scale.
When these resource, indicators are not managed efficiently, they can put forth certain challenges in project management processes.
Now, let’s understand the formula of resource availability.
Resource Availability Formula
The formula for calculating resource availability is typically:
Resource availability = (total available resources / total required resources) * 100
Where:
- Total available resources represent the quantity or capacity of resources that are currently accessible or ready for use.
- Total required resources refer to the quantity or capacity of resources necessary to complete a specific task, project, or operation — also known as resource demand.
Now, let’s understand the concept of resource availability with an example.
Resource Availability Example
To better understand resource availability, let’s consider an example:
An IT firm has a cybersecurity project in the pipeline. The project manager starts the planning process once the project has reached a certain stage of probability. They assess the resource requirements in terms of skills, capacity, cost, and duration.
If the IT firm has adequate resource availability, the project team can start working on the project immediately without any delays or additional recruitment. However, if the required skills are not available within the firm, the project manager may need to recruit new staff or train existing ones, which can cause delays in the project schedule.
Moreover, if the firm has a talent shortage, the PMO (Project Management Office) may need to out-rotate and backfill resources from other projects or departments, which, when done incorrectly can hamper project quality and delivery. In such a case, the project managers must carefully manage the available resources to ensure that the project is completed on time without affecting other projects or areas of the business.
Thus, resource availability is crucial to the success of a project. Next, let’s learn about the business benefits of managing resource availability.
Benefits of Tracking Resource Availability in Project Planning
Tracking resource availability in a firm offers myriads of benefits. Let’s read below:
Minimizes Project Resource Costs
Adequate resource availability eliminates the need to hire additional staff during the project initiation stage, preventing last-minute firefighting of resources and saving costs. In addition, clear visibility into resource availability and other attributes allows managers to leverage global resources from low-cost locations. This helps control the project budget and enhance profitability.
Helps in Accurate Resource Scheduling
Resource availability allows project managers to analyze the current availability of resources and identify the ones with adequate capacity and matching skill sets. Accordingly, they can assign the right person to the right project task, preventing double bookings and scheduling conflicts. This way, projects are initiated and completed on time without compromising quality.
Enhances Workforce’s Productivity
Tracking resource availability ensures that the right personnel with the right capacity and expertise are assigned to tasks, preventing bottlenecks and optimizing workflow efficiency. Additionally, it prevents overburdening or underutilization of resources, maintaining a balanced workload that promotes sustained productivity levels.
Improves Decision-Making Process
Monitoring resource availability is crucial in project management for informed decision-making. By forecasting workforce availability, managers can identify shortages or excesses in advance. This allows them to take proactive training, hiring, or outsourcing measures to address gaps, ensuring timely project completion and delivery.
Allows Better Risk Management
With adequate resources, managers can better manage project risks. For instance, if scope changes happen and additional resources are needed, managers can adjust workloads to mitigate bottlenecks. Moreover, by tracking resource availability, managers can develop contingency plans for unplanned attrition or leaves. It enables them to create backup employees or flexible workforce arrangements, minimizing uncertainties and ensuring project success.
Next, let’s understand the factors that affect the availability of these resources.
Read more: What is Resource Planning and Why is it Important?
Factors Influencing Resource Availability in Project Management
Intelligent resource management drives the success of a given project. However,
These are some of the factors that can affect resource availability and, in turn, impact your project’s health.
Lack of Centralized Visibility
Businesses are now adopting a matrix-based, shared services model. Project managers, therefore, need to have a unified view of the enterprise-wide workforce. It will create transparency with respect to resources and projects.
When you have a 360-degree view of your workforce and their allocation, you can track the availability of resources in real time. This will reduce the project scheduling conflicts and eliminate the risk of over or underutilization of resources. Besides this, it will also add the edge of accuracy to your project plans. The lack of visibility, on the other hand, can spiral down your project life cycle.
Inability to Update Skills in Real-Time
The ongoing market volatility demands an updated skills inventory. Simply put, employees should be able to upgrade their knowledge based on dynamic market trends. This will help them keep their expertise relevant down the line. At the same time, managers should be aware of these added skills to make the most of them.
However, some organizations are still using spreadsheets to maintain their data inventory. The challenge is that these spreadsheets are not updated for months, and eventually, the database becomes outdated.
Managers need to scale up their systems and equip them with a smarter one where the skills can be updated in real-time.
By doing so, you will have clarity on everyone’s expertise and be able to allocate tasks easily.
Misalignment in Project and Resource Calendars
Employees prefer to have the flexibility to plan around their schedules and time off work. However, the deadlines and their leave dates can clash for two reasons. When the resource calendars are not updated in real time, managers do not have a unified view of their leaves. This situation can lead to discrepancies and chaos.
Overall, with a lack of visual stimulus to project and resource calendars, the project’s health and quality will suffer. Moreover, employees will not feel motivated or productive to work when the goals and deadlines aren’t defined. It is, therefore, important for project managers to define the timelines and schedule the tasks on a unified Gantt chart.
Impact of Increasing Resource Costs on Profit
Resource costs are a major deciding factor in overall revenue. If the resource costs go beyond a permissible limit, the profit margin will be affected, and profitability will be reduced. The onus is on managers to ensure that they do not surpass the resource cost limit. This will help them control the project’s financials.
What factors can impact resource costs?
First of all, ad hoc allocations to complete highly specialized tasks can cost you more than your budget. Secondly, improper capacity planning leads to mismatched skill sets as well as last-minute hiring of expensive resources. This will reduce your project’s profits. To minimize project costs, project managers must proactively plan their projects well in advance.
Read more: 5 ways to Reduce Project Management Costs
Project Managers Competing for the Same Resource
Even though matrix organizational structure has many benefits, there can be downsides too. For instance, multiple projects can require the same niche skill for a similar duration. In this case, internal conflicts may arise between two project managers competing for the same resource.
To keep these predicaments from hampering your project’s progress, it all boils down to having an intuitive system. It will provide you with real-time insights into project allocations and resource calendars. In addition, a project manager will know if a resource is already booked by another project manager on a billable project. This will keep the discrepancies at bay.
All of these factors have a significant effect on resource availability. Now, let’s go through the challenges organizations face while tracking resource availability.
Challenges Firm Faces While Tracking Resource Availability
Absence of Proper Resource Tracking Software
Most organizations still rely on half-baked, home-grown solutions for managing and allocating their workforce. However, these systems cannot track and update resource attributes in real time. So, when managers do not have access to proper tracking software, it impedes their ability to assess resource availability and schedule them to projects appropriately.
Lack of Real-time Visibility into Resource Schedules
As discussed earlier,the legacy tool fails to provide real-time visibility into the current and future resource schedules. Without up-to-date information, it becomes difficult for project managers to analyze whether resources are under or overutilized. If the workload imbalance is not rectified promptly, it can lead to disengagement, burnout, and unplanned attrition, all of which can disrupt project workflow.
Frequent Fluctuations in Project Demand
Organization inevitably experiences project demand fluctuations due factors such as rapidly changing market conditions, shifting client priorities, or unexpected project scope changes. Consequently, it leads to peak and dips in resource demand. As a result, firms have to readjust resource allocations. In such a scenario, failure to track resource availability can hamper the firm’s ability to meet these changing project demand effectively.
Unexpected Time-offs & Employee Turnover
When employees take unexpected time-offs, it impacts the overall resource availability. At the same time, high employee turnover reduces the resources available to take up new opportunities. Therefore, such unplanned and frequent absences can leave projects understaffed, resulting in last-minute resourcing hassles. This not only affects project schedules but also overburdens the existing team members.
Scheduling Conflicts Among Project Managers
In project-based businesses, different project managers may compete for the same skill sets concurrently. However, when resource managers do not have insights into the specific resource’s availability, they may double-book them. This can lead to managerial conflicts, project delays, and compromised work quality.
Now, let’s learn about the best practices for managing resource availability in an organization.
Best Practices for Managing Resource Availability
Managers need to track resources and their availability as it impacts how efficiently they are allocated and utilized across various projects.
Listed below are some of the effective methods to manage resource availability:
Centralize All the Resource-related Information
Organizations must consolidate resource-related information like skills, capacity, demand, cost rate, and other attributes on a single platform to create a single source of truth. This gives managers clear visibility into the resource metrics, allowing them to make effective and timely decisions.
Besides, with enterprise-wide resource visibility, managers can check which employees work on what projects and determine their availability accordingly. Based on these insights, they can allocate the best-fit employees to appropriate tasks, facilitating competent allocation.
Forecast Future Resource Demand for Pipeline Projects
Managers should analyze the pipeline resource demand and conduct a capacity vs. demand gap analysis to identify resource shortage/excess. Accordingly, they can take remedial measures to bridge these gaps in advance. This will help managers to ensure suitable resources are available for the project initiation phase.
For instance, a banking app project will start in 3 months and require ten developers, two software architects, and one UI/UX designer. Within the organization, there was a shortage of four developers, one architect, and an excess of two designers. For shortages, managers can implement training, out-rotation, and backfill strategy or hire new employees. For excess designers, managers can bring forth the project timelines or sell the extra capacity at a discounted rate.
Read More: What is Resource Capacity Planning? An Ultimate Guide for Every Project Manager
Prioritize Resource Allocation Based on Business Value
Managers must take a systematic approach to prioritize projects and allocate resources effectively. For this, they must clearly define the organizational goals and align the project objectives accordingly. Next, they must categorize projects based on criticality or business value and select high-priority opportunities that generate more revenue and contribute to the organization’s strategic goals.
Once the project priorities are established, managers must allocate resources based on their availability. This approach streamlines workflows and helps maintain momentum on pivotal assignments, preventing potential delays. Furthermore, it enables a uniform distribution of skilled personnel and necessary tools to tackle time-sensitive tasks. This optimizes productivity and demonstrates an organization’s agility in responding to critical demands, fostering client satisfaction.
Optimize Resource Utilization to Prevent Under/Overallocation
Overutilization of resources can cause stress and burnout, while underutilization can lead to disengagement and lower morale. Both instances negatively affect employee productivity and, in turn, disrupt the project’s progress. To mitigate this, managers must monitor the resource utilization levels regularly and take remedial measures in case of any variance.
If employees are underutilized, managers can proactively allocate more work to them. On the contrary, they can apply suitable optimization techniques like resource smoothing and leveling if they are overutilized. This helps in the optimal utilization of employees and maintains a healthy resource index.
Read More: Maximize Profitable Resource Utilization with Modern Resource Management Solution
Invest in Training/ Development Programs to Keep Skills Up-to-date
A LinkedIn survey reveals that 94% of employees would stay longer if the firm invested in their learning and development.
The above stat depicts the immense significance of investing in the learning and development of employees within a firm. Technological advancements and evolving industry trends have led to skills obsolescence and unplanned attrition. Therefore, organizations must facilitate training and development programs to overcome these challenges.
This will ensure the availability of a diversified talent pool that can effectively be utilized across multi-faceted projects. Besides, when organizations have a trained workforce, managers can allocate them to projects that align with their skills in case of increased demand or shortage of resources for projects. This can avoid constantly hiring niche-skilled resources, minimize project costs, and ensure competent allocation.
Promote Collaboration Between Project Managers to Avoid Conflicts
In a multi-project environment, organizations must ensure efficient collaboration between project managers to eliminate resource conflicts. For this, firms must establish clear communication channels for seamless collaboration. Additionally, regular meetings must be conducted where managers can share updates, milestones, and challenges to foster a cohesive environment.
Besides, firms can introduce a platform that fosters open dialogue, enabling the inclusion of diverse perspectives and the development of innovative solutions. In addition, companies can implement a resource management solution that will offer project managers real-time data into workforce schedules. Based on these insights, they can take necessary measures to procure the required skill set and avoid scheduling conflicts.
Develop a Contingency Plan to Deal with Unexpected Events
Unexpected events are inevitable in a multi-project environment. This can happen when employees take long leaves due to personal issues, when a critical resource exits the organization, or when a resource in a key position retires. If firms are not prepared with a contingency plan, ongoing projects may be affected or come to a grinding halt. To mitigate these unplanned absenteeism or attrition risks, managers must identify potential talent for critical roles.
They can then create a succession plan that provides appropriate training/upskilling measures to prepare the employees for leadership roles. It helps reduce the over-dependence on limited critical resources and boosts the organization’s ability to take up more multi-faceted projects and business opportunities.
Now that we understand the best practices, let’s know how a modern resource management solution will help.
How Can a Modern ERM Tool Help Track Resource Availability?
A modern resource management tool can help firms track resource availability across organizational boundaries. It provides 360-degree visibility of all the employees and their attributes, including availability. This granular insight allows project and resource managers to identify and allocate available personnel with the right skill sets for project tasks.
Moreover, the tool’s forecasting and capacity planning feature helps managers forward plan future resource requirements. It enables them to take corrective action to bridge the capacity vs. demand gap and ensure the availability of key resources for project initiation.
The multi-dimensional resource scheduler allows supervisors to track and optimize work schedules in real time. Thus, it helps minimize scheduling conflicts and address under/overutilization. Besides, the competency matrix allows firms to identify suitable candidates for succession planning and training/upskilling initiatives.
Finally, the tool’s BI-powered reporting dashboards, such as color-coded heatmaps, forecast vs. actual, utilization, availability, etc., help managers analyze various resource metrics and recognize anomalies ahead of the curve.
Conclusion
Resource availability is more than just one parameter that can be taken for granted. The resource-centric challenges mentioned above explain how when available resources are not matched with the resource demand, they can cause project bottlenecks. As a result, project managers must look at resource availability thoroughly to deliver the project within budget and time.
How are you managing team resources and their availability so far?
Glossary
Read More: Glossary of Resource Workforce Planning, Scheduling and Management
SAVIOM Solution
SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solution for managing your enterprise resources effectively and efficiently. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has created its global presence across 50 countries and helped more than 100 customers achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has highly customizable products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and workforce planning software based on business requirements.
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