Lack of Resources in Project Management: How to Discover?

Jira capacity planning and resource management are not easy, especially for big companies with numerous projects and many resources: people, equipment, and facilities. Before starting a project, we plan the resources we need and assign people to tasks according to their skills and abilities.

Project management is not always a simple thing to do as there are a lot of things to consider during the planning and execution. Some of these factors must be considered right from the beginning and some factors come up during the project path, but the Project Manager always needs to understand their project resources as the project shouldn’t be limited by them.

Luckily, with ActivityTimeline, a resource capacity planning app, resource allocation became effortless.

Recognizing the Importance of Resource Management

The Role of Resources in Project Success

Resources are the lifeblood of any project. They encompass a wide range of elements, including human resources, financial capital, equipment, materials, and more. Effective resource management ensures that these elements are allocated efficiently and effectively to achieve project objectives. Without proper resource management, projects are prone to delays, budget overruns, and compromised quality.

Common Resource Constraints in Project Management

Resource constraints are limitations that restrict the availability or utilization of project resources. Some common constraints include:

1. Limited budget: Insufficient funds allocated to the project.

2. Lack of skilled personnel: Shortage of experienced and qualified team members.

3. Time constraints: Inadequate time allocated for project completion.

4. Equipment and tool shortages: Insufficiency or unavailability of necessary tools and equipment.

5. Inadequate infrastructure: Lack of necessary facilities and infrastructure to support the project.

Addressing these constraints requires proactive monitoring and resource management techniques to identify resource gaps promptly.

Indicators of Resource Shortages

Delays and Missed Deadlines

One of the most apparent signs of lacking project resources is frequent project delays and missed deadlines. If your project consistently falls behind schedule, it may be an indication that you don’t have enough resources to meet the required deliverables on time. Tracking project milestones and comparing them against the planned timeline can help you identify potential resource gaps.

Increased Workload and Overworked Team Members

When team members are consistently overloaded with work and struggle to meet their responsibilities, it’s a clear indication that you lack sufficient resources. Pay attention to signs of burnout, decreased productivity, and a decline in the quality of work. These indicators can provide insights into resource shortages and help you take corrective actions.

Frequent Scope Changes and Adjustments

If your project frequently undergoes scope changes, it could be an indicator that you lack the necessary resources to meet the initial requirements. When resources are limited, project managers often need to make adjustments to accommodate the available resources. These changes can affect the project scope, leading to compromised objectives or additional work that exceeds the original estimates.

Utilizing Resource Planning Software for Resource Monitoring

Benefits of Resource Planning Software

Project management software can be a valuable tool for resource monitoring and management. It provides a centralized platform to track resource allocation, availability, and utilization. With features like resource calendars, timelines, and real-time dashboards, project managers can gain comprehensive insights into their resource needs and make data-driven decisions.

ActivityTimeline provides all of the aforementioned features. It provides a real-time planning dashboard with timelines for careful capacity planning and tracking, that helps to manage resources effortlessly.

Features to Look for in Resource Management Tool

When selecting project management software for resource monitoring, consider the following features:

1. Resource capacity planning: The ability to allocate resources to tasks and balance workloads across team members.

ActivityTimeline dashboard includes special workload indicators showing the workload of each employee and the whole team, and helps to understand whether resources aren’t over, or underutilized:

2. Real-time tracking: Instant updates on resource utilization, availability, and conflicts.

The app offers a dedicated Timesheet section where Project Manager can create various timesheets reports:

3. Reporting and analytics: Generate reports on resource usage, and bottlenecks, and forecast future resource needs.

Reports are very important when it comes to resource planning. The tool has a great Reporting Section with dozens of useful resource and project reports:

By leveraging resource management software, you can streamline resource planning processes, and proactively address resource gaps to conduct successful project.

Monitoring Project Resources

It’s a surprise to discover that resources don’t cover what you planned. Resources can come from anything from materials to people and can lead to several causes a person has stretched their resources. If the issue was small it is possible to apply a simple solution to look at your projects, plans, and tasks.

To prevent a short supply of resources, you should monitor your project’s resources throughout. This is possible with ActivityTimeline for managing resources in teams and resource tracking. This way you are capable of monitoring resource availability and performance on a regular basis.

It’s important that you have enough resources to complete your project quickly. To do so you should list everything you need, determine how many you need, and plan accordingly. ActivityTimeline, in particular, offers real-time dashboards showing how the resources are performing.

How Does Lack of Resources Affect a Project?

The shortage of resources in a project shouldn’t cause project failure. Tell me the reason for it. Because the project shouldn’t be limited in resources. When you run into incontinence in resources, it is a good idea. Runaway resources can indicate deeper problems. And it is. Let’s see why the projects are running out of resources.

1. Resources are overstretched

After a project’s selection and approval are completed, the second common resource management problem appears when managers begin to assign funds to projects. Often funds aren’t devoted to a single project at any given time and they might be working simultaneously on multiple projects managed by different project managers. Its solutions are simple. The difficulty is in making sure resources are planned in their daily capacity and there are no conflicts across projects. Planning for resources on multiple projects is similar to whac-a-mole. A little change in one thing will cause a second problem.

2. Your resources are attached to the wrong project

In the same way, as in the earlier example, organizations often do something wrong. This typically means there is not adequate prioritization or selection of projects. Almost all the time the owner who had the loudest voice gets the resources. Find some useful information on how project prioritizing is integrated into the portfolio management system here. Make certain to put resources in upcoming priority projects first when planning your future work plan. This is a good suggestion.

An example, of how to find the right resources in your company by skills and positions via ActivityTimeline is written below.

3. Agile not always help Project Managers in resource forecasting

The use of agile development techniques can also be beneficial for a business in IT environments. Nonetheless, agile is primarily geared toward a longer-term goal and does not help companies figure out what resources they want. Organizations can often prepare their roadmaps half year prior and make a commitment to customers about when they will deliver them.

The next tips can help with with problem.

4. Improve your resource management and capacity planning

It’s best to start preparing for the future by having a comprehensive plan for how much and why the project may require it. The leading key of resource management software or project management software is the capacity plan. Poor planning can lead to more challenges in a project. And as a result, poor quality leads to a waste of a budget. An overview of resource management tools can help to figure out what you need. Capacity planning helps determine what capability is needed to undertake new projects.

5. Your planed and actual plans are different

Once the project is started, it is important to track the estimated costs of the project and include changes as part of the plan. Things change frequently. Too many plans have been put together, but never reviewed after completing their work. It’ll be a big deal. Your plan may not match reality. The best way to prevent the lack of project resources is this case is to generate the Planned vs Actual report.

ActivityTimeline: The Resource Capacity Planning

Let’s take an example of a company with a new project estimated with a certain number of working hours. PM starts to allocate resources and needs 5 employees to be assigned to the project. The app allows creating the internal events and resources, which is very useful during the planning of potential assignees and project tasks.

As far as we can see, the team lacks one developer, so the PM can see that and start searching for the needed resource.

If you have multiple projects, you need to track them especially carefully, as it is easy to get confused with tons of data. The resource lack can arise not only at the beginning of the project but during the working process, e.g. if some users are overloaded with work and you need to assign new people to the project. So, our main steps are:

• Find out whether resources are overloaded with work

• Create and group the needed potential resources

• Reassign tasks to a new resource

First step. Jira capacity planning become effortless with ActivityTimeline, as it provides various reports for your convenience. If you want to discover the resource under/overload, you just need to generate our resource utilization report:

Freya is overloaded and needs help, so we need to find an additional designer for the project.

Second step. We create the potential resource in ActivityTimeline and assign a tag “The needed resource“ to it. In the future, it will help when the manager wants to see all of the existing resource needs. We can search it in the search field:

or create a Dynamic Team, based on the skill “The needed resource”. A new team of the Needed Resources will be formed and you can always control the overall resource lack.

Third step. So, when we actually found the lacking resource, we can replace the virtual resource with a real one, and reassign tasks to that resource. ActivityTimeline provides a great feature of the “Bulk Reschedule”, so we can simply reassign tasks: