How to Allocate the Right Resources for a Project

(Originally posted on LinkedIn)

As with any project, one of the first things that comes to mind are the resources required to complete that project. It can be the largest hurdle and most important factor in hitting your deadlines. Because of this, resources become just that and we can forget what they represent. In the end, we have to remember that resources represent real people looking to help us achieve our goal and it is our responsibility to recognize the individual skillsets and personalities of these people to create a cohesive team. If we focus on people first, it can make a project plan much easier.

Step 1: Understand and Define the Project Scope

Before knowing how to allocate people for a project, you need to understand and define the full scope of the project. This includes deadlines, milestones, and tasks but more importantly the overall goal of the project and the impact it will have on the organization. This will allow you to work backwards and start from a single task and work up to the full project. This approach is important because it ensures there is nothing missing. As everyone is busy, it can be easy to just look at a project from a high level and make an educated guess based on previous project. This saves time up front but can be very costly if even a single task is missed.

Step 2: Align Resource Requirements with Tasks

Now that you have every task, milestone, and deadline defined, it is time to align the resources with each task based on the skillset and expertise level required. For example, a Jr. level analyst may take ten hours to complete a task while a Sr. level analyst may only take five hours. Assigning the wrong level professional can drastically impact future deadlines and your ability to complete milestones on time. After defining the resources based on said requirements, you will have total hour requirements for each individual at each expertise level.

Step 3: Allocating Resources

With the project scope complete and resource requirements defined, the next step is assigning the correct individuals. This sounds simple but can be much more complex. One of the biggest difficulties in allocating resources for a project is ensuring you are not over allocating someone to the point that they can't complete the work assigned to them. Working with the managers of each resource is vital in making sure that your project deadlines and resource needs can be met. These managers and their team members are being pulled in multiple directions and your project is very unlikely to be the only thing they are assigned to. Once you have the approval of these managers to assign resources, you will assign the approved individual to each task with the estimated time required.

Step 4: Manage Change

Once your project has started, it is important to pay attention to any over runs or early completions. If a milestone was completed a week early, you have an individual that may be able to get ahead and help elsewhere. On the other hand, if there are overruns, it will be your responsibility to find ways to be more efficient. This includes finding underutilized team members to pick up the work load or requesting more resources in general if the scope was planned incorrectly. Unfortunately, projects do not usually go exactly as planned. With that said, if you took the time to plan correctly and follow the steps above, you will have less challenges and will know how to react if anything arises.