Speaker 1: Today, we're going to talk about resource management, allocation, utilization, and the tools that you should be using.

Speaker 2: Resource management is a core knowledge area for project managers, and they spend a lot of time in the planning and execution, managing that activity for individual team members at a higher level, professional service organizations and practices specifically should be using these same techniques at a broader level to make sure that they don't get into trouble with over-commitment or not having enough resources to deliver

Speaker 1: commitments. Well, this becomes kind of a big deal because a lot of organizations that I know of and even some of the ones that I've been a part of subscribe to the just in time staffing model, right? Absolutely. So in that model, you got to have a much better resource management.

Speaker 2: I would think you do. You have to spend some time looking at it. The beginning of that activity starts with a forecast. We look at the term allocation, breaking down a project or a contract into pieces helps do this. We call it decompose it into pieces. So if we look at tasks or deliverables or just the project in a whole, and we forecast out what these items are going to be on an individual resource basis, that tying a task or deliverable to an individual resource is the allocation model done by hours. We can get a picture of how many total hours it's going to take in a forecast

Speaker 1: to deliver that work. So do you typically look at that as a, like a job function or like an actual individual resource when you're looking out from an allocation perspective?

Speaker 2: Well, the example that you gave before is a really realistic one, which is just in time staffing. In many instances, you're looking to find a specific skillset or a role on the project, whether it be a developer or project manager, a QA technician or a trainer. In those instances, you could use generic skillsets to do it. And when you get into the actual delivery, you'll want to tie that to individuals to make sure that you can understand if they have more than one activity, that's a really important thing to keep track of.

Speaker 1: So I also think it has something to do with sophistication, right? So I think since we're talking about building a practice, we may not be as mature, sophisticated as we'd like initially. So I think doing job roles is a really good idea. And then moving from job roles as we kind of get used to it and kind of figure out how we like to do it and what kind of data we like to collect and what granularity, then doing it at the allocation level, but for the individual resources makes a lot of sense. Yes. Now that said, as soon as the project starts or the resources is utilized, then I do think you have to do utilization at that point at the individual resource level.

Speaker 2: Yep. And so that transitions into the concept of utilization, understanding what's happening at the utilization is it's a measure that's typically expressed in a percent, which is the number of hours that are actually worked on that activity divided by the total capacity of them. So for example, I could be assigned half time or 50% to a specific project. Did I actually perform that 50%? It's a key measure to understand. Are you putting in the necessary time to complete the work? But on the other side, let's say that I've been allocated 150%, which is in a 40 hour week, I could be assigned 60 hours worth of work. Then we have a different problem.

Speaker 1: Right. So if I, if I've decided that, okay, I'm building a practice and I really want to focus on allocation cause that's going to keep me safe in the beginning. I really want to focus on utilization because that's going to tell me a, how I did against my allocation. And then B, it tells me a really good idea. It gives me a good idea of how my, how my people are doing, how, how they did. What kind of tools could I use to help help keep me sane as I'm building this practice?

Speaker 2: To start the forecast concept is extremely important. And a lot of people use Microsoft project and Excel and other tools to break down those projects into pieces and then estimate who needs to be associated with that deliverable or activity. And then how many hours they think it's going to be needed to be done. And then you can summarize that or again, break it down into smaller pieces, but capturing that information up front and then adjusting it over time is really, really an important part of the life cycle of a project or contract.

Speaker 1: So if I'm not a project expert or if I don't really want to get into Microsoft project, I don't subscribe to, to that tool. Let's say, um, how, how could I use, let's say Excel, right? To get the same kind of info.

Speaker 2: Okay. Um, many organizations that are subscribing to an Agile or a scrum methodology use a very high level, uh, allocation. And in this instance, we would say that, uh, Bob and Sue and Bill are assigned to project X a hundred percent. And that keeps it really simple, even simpler. You could just say, I have three developers and that's 300% in the technical term, but it's easy to keep track of just one head count. Um, and we know that right now we have three people actively working and in the next project we need three more people. When will Bill or Sue or Bob be available to start that next project?

Speaker 1: Got it. So basically I need some sort of start and end date. I need some sort of hours count. Uh, if there's more than one, uh, if I've got three developers that I need to probably need to break those down per each developer so I can flip flop developer equals Chris Covey. Yes. Right. Um, and then obviously I need a role. So I kind of know what I'm working with. Is there anything else from an allocation or utilization perspective or even a resource management that I would want to, I want to track that early. Um, I may not use it right away, but as I'm building my practice, is there anything else that you can think of that we may want to track early that will give us a value added information down the road? The number one thing is the timesheet concept.

Speaker 2: Okay. Making sure that you're, you're having your team members do it. And in most organizations, you understand timesheets as important for bills, uh, making sure that we're billing against the project. But that information is also a feedback mechanism into how good your plan is. So how was my forecast? Did I really need three developers? Well, guess what? It turns out that all three of those people only really worked half time. I could have probably gotten away with two people. Um, understanding that information and that feedback from the timesheets is really important. And then you can start developing measures against that. Uh, how accurate was your plan and what is your utilization of people over time?

Speaker 1: Got it. Okay. So there's four things that we talked about today. Resource management, allocation, utilization, and a few tips and tricks from tools and data capture that you can use to build your practice. This video series is designed to help you build or improve your professional services practice. If you found this interesting or you have a question, hit the like button below, submit a comment to start a conversation subscribe. If you haven't already, and I'll see you in the next video.