Welcome to Birdview’s Guide to Resource Management.
In this guide, we will review all key aspects of resource management, from its definition to advanced concepts like resource capacity management and billable utilization. We will cover the ins and outs of selecting the right team members, how to forecast your team’s workload, and how to analyze resource allocation to make your team more productive.
Managing resources could be one of the most complex and challenging aspects of managing a project. To be successful, one needs both great soft skills in managing people and the right tools to manage the process.
Definition of Resource Management
Resource management refers to the process of effectively and efficiently allocating resources to achieve specific goals. In other words, it’s about ensuring you have the right resources available at the right time to complete work in a way that costs the least amount of money, takes the least amount of time, and produces the best possible outcome.
Resources can include things like people, equipment, time, money, and materials. Managing these resources involves identifying what you need, prioritizing their use, and tracking their availability and usage. It also means making decisions about how to allocate resources when there are competing demands or limited availability.
Overall, resource management is about being strategic and intentional in the way you use your resources so that you can achieve your goals in the most efficient and effective way possible.
In this guide, most of the time, when we refer to resources, we mean people in your organization.
Why Resource Management is important
Proper resource management is vital because it helps ensure that projects are completed on time, within budget, and to the required standard. It also allows organizations to maximize their resources and minimize waste, which can improve their overall performance and competitiveness.
Effective team management is the difference between success and failure. And if things go wrong, the consequences can be pretty dire. Here are just some examples:
- your team does not have enough work;
- your team has too much work;
- your team has no idea what the priorities are;
- your team has schedule overlaps with other projects;
- you’ve picked the wrong team members for your project;
- you don’t have accurate information on the actual time spent on each project or task;
- you have no clear visibility into the progress of your project;
- your project or team is late or over budget.
As you can see, there are a lot of things that can go sideways when resources are not managed well. To make your project a success, you need to plan your resources and plan well.
Key Concepts
The key concepts of resource management revolve around effectively and efficiently managing resources to achieve specific goals while optimizing costs, reducing waste, and mitigating risk.
Here are the most common concepts, which we will cover in detail in the subsequent chapters.
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