Your portfolio of projects most likely includes several projects, and your project team members are probably involved in multiple projects at the same time. That gives you a challenge: resource allocation across the portfolio can be hard because you’ve got a lot of balls to keep up in the air at once. And when the right resources aren’t in the right place at the right time, there’s a risk of project delays, overspend and more.
We’ve written before about 5 key challenges that we see time and again (and given you tips on how to address them) but there are plenty of other factors that influence resource management when you’ve got many projects on the go. Here are 5 more things that your planners should be taking into account when addressing resource allocation across multiple projects.
1. Conflicting resource skills
Resources with specialized skills might be needed to work on several projects at the same time. If you’ve only got one person or a small pool of people with the right skills, you’ve got to make a judgement call about which project gets their time first. Prioritizing which project should have access to these skills can be difficult, because priorities are often not clear. Which project sponsor is going to say, “It’s fine, give the resources to another project.” More often than not, the project sponsors we meet are strong advocates for their projects and are going to lobby hard to get the resources for their work.
When you don’t have enough people with the right skills, it can lead to a shortage of specialized skills in critical projects, potentially impacting the quality or delivery of outputs. However, you’ve got to balance these occasions with business need – you don’t necessarily need ten of the same resource type for the one or two times a year where you have conflicts.
Resolve by: Setting clear priorities across your portfolio of projects. Manage skill requirements by forecasting forward and seeing what skills will be needed in the coming months. You might be able to juggle around the projects or tasks so the resources you have are available at the right time. But you might need to buy in or train up another resource for the short term to fill the gap.
2. Dependency management
Resources often have dependencies on one another. For example, your decorators can’t go in until the walls are finished and dry, and software user testers aren’t required until the developers have completed their own testing. You can’t use the cement mixer until the raw materials are delivered to site.
Some of those dependencies will be across projects – a deliverable from one project enables another to move forward, even if it is something as simple as finishing with the cement mixer so another project can move it to their job site. Managing these dependencies becomes complex when the same resources are stretched across multiple projects. Mismanagement of dependencies can cause bottlenecks and delays across multiple projects.
Resolve by: Link your projects in the project management software you use, like Oracle Primavera P6. Build strong relationships between project leaders and schedulers across projects so you know where your resources are and how long they will be used for.
3. Administrative overhead
If all this is sounding like a lot of work, you’re right! Managing resources across multiple projects increases administrative tasks such as scheduling, reporting, and tracking. This overhead can consume significant time and effort, for both the resources (reporting up) and the leadership team (assimilating the information into plans). The more time you’re spending understanding resource availability, the less time you have for strategic planning and effective resource management.
Resolve by: Give your teams the right tools for managing their work. Make sure they know who to talk to and when to report status. Automate reporting and tracking of project work as much as possible.
4. Budget constraints
Allocating resources across multiple projects often requires careful budget management. You can only resource what you can afford. Limited budgets may force compromises in resource allocation, like having to assign a less experienced member of the team to a task. You might ideally want a more experienced resource, but if the budget doesn’t stretch to cover their day rate, then you might have to make a compromise.
The challenge here is that insufficient budgets can lead to the under-resourcing of projects, which can in turn have an effect on delivery times. Projects typically take longer if they use less experienced human resources because they take longer to complete tasks. There might also be quality issues.
Resolve by: Work with the client to make sure budgets are adequate and ensure close financial management throughout the project. Build enough time into the schedules for the tasks being completed by the resources assigned, not the resources you wish had been assigned.
5. Project delays
In a multi-project environment, projects with differing timelines and deadlines can create challenges when you try to coordinate resources, especially when one project faces delays that affect others. That engineer who was supposed to be free on Tuesday? They can’t make it to the new job until next week now as the first project is overrunning and they haven’t been able to start work.
Inconsistent timelines can cause a domino effect, where delays in one project impact the resource availability for others. That can create a headache for your schedulers, overspends and lack of morale on the team – no one likes to be shifted around to different tasks at the last minute or feel like the project is out of control.
Resolve by: Good quality project management is the backbone of being able to keep your projects on track. Make sure your project managers are trained and experienced, or supported by experienced staff. Make sure your schedulers are equipped with the tools to help them do their job and the management support to make the right decisions.
Addressing resource allocation challenges fairly and effectively across projects is part of the job of the combined project leadership team when you’ve got multiple projects on one site or across various locations. Keep the communication channels open, lean into your experienced staff and what the schedulers are saying, and you’ll find that even when there are challenges, the team can rise to meet them.