Resource planning helps expect all the resources that you might use to complete a project. A proper resource plan should essentially include the quantity and cost of labor, equipment, and other materials required to complete the project. A good resource plan makes it easy to gain the confidence of the stakeholders of the project, which increases your likelihood of succeeding.
Why Does Resource Planning Matter?
You must create resource plans before starting the project. The person-in-charge or the team in charge of the resource management for a particular project creates it. The resource plan will help in reducing budgeting expenses and help forecast project expenses, including the risk factor fairly accurately.
Creating different types of templates in this regard might also help you table the different types of labor you might require, the roles and responsibilities of the labor force, etc. You will also need the number of people needed for manual labor, the equipment, and raw material requirements, along with their quantity and quality.
The resource template will also help you to plan the dates of the allocation of tasks and observe deadlines. During resource planning, you must make sure that you create two types of plans; a hypothetical plan which does not have any resource constraints and the actual plan created on the realistic and actual model of resource availability. Having a viable contingency plan in case the need for it ever arises is of utmost importance. Make sure your backup plan is almost as good as the original plan so that you do not lose capital or resources significantly in case you ever have to go with the backup.
However, you can always go for a project management scheduling software to sort everything.
The Importance of Having a Resource Plan
The main advantage of having a resource plan is that it enables you to accurately follow the deadlines of the project and monitor resources used for the project. A resource plan can help you in maximizing project budget spending, enhance project workflow to make it smooth and efficient, open up communication channels to assist with inter-departmental communication for follow-ups, etc.
Having a proper resource plan gives confidence and motivation to various stakeholders involved in your project. Observing your resource plan might provide them with a sense of security, assuring them that their resources are being used well and that there is no scope for unnecessary wastage.
Completing a project within tight limits of the budget is harder than it sounds. It is challenging, and it takes a lot of finesse to make sure you’re doing the right thing. Half of your project is already successful if you have managed the spending and acquiring of your resources. Creating a list of resources required and allocating them correctly to different parts of your project is of utmost importance. It can make the difference between a ‘completed project’ and a ‘project very well done.’
Benefits of Resource Planning
Resource planning gives you the liberty to understand your resources and know-how you can extract the maximum profits using only those resources. It also helps you avoid any unforeseen emergencies that may arise with resource utilization.
Identification of an over-allocated resource and calculation of dependency of resources will help you understand how your team is likely to perform in the project completion tasks.
Resource planning also helps you to create limits for the number of resources you need to use for each activity within the project. You must follow these limits strictly.
Creating Your Resource Plan
The most important elements of a resource plan are scheduled dates for the tasks, the number of resources required for each project, and a detailed resource schedule.
The amount of resources used must also include resources used daily. So you must prepare yourself to observe and log every little significant expense incurred during the completion of your project to make sure that you have a fool-proof resource plan.
Step 1:
Structure all the resources according to the task and then decide which resources you should allocate to which task. Decide the equipment needed for the project and then create a list of non-consumable resources too.
Step 2:
Figure out how much of your resources you may use in the project. Now, feed the data to the project management scheduling software. Try and track when you use your resources and make sure you have the right data on hand to keep working efficiently.
Step 3:
From the information that you gain from the first two steps, specify the resources, make a rigid time frame of consumption, and quantify the consumption per day, week, and month. After that, calculate the total resources used on a monthly or weekly basis. Make sure you put aside some parts of your capital resources to tackle any unforeseen emergencies that might arise in the completion of your project. Here, you might not always like to jump to the contingency plan every time some little thing goes off track. It will benefit you a lot if some amounts of resources are set aside for emergency consumption.
Having a resource plan with elaborate information about materials and people involved in a project is the key to not only creating the perfect resource management or planning strategy but also to impart you all the benefits it comes with. Do not make the mistake of giving the same resources to multiple tasks simultaneously. Instead of making your project finish faster, it could hamper your resource efficiency and the speed of the overall project negatively.
Over the years, resource planning has come to the limelight. It has undergone many changes, mostly for the better. Modern project management scheduling software and tools can help you maximize your resource budget efficiency, your team’s time and the tracking of deadlines and budgets easier.
