Agile Resource Management
Resource management is a vital responsibility for project managers and is key in any project. Usually what comes to mind first when talking about resource management are the actual physical resources involved with a project such as materials or supplies. The other equally important resource are the “human resources” involved with the project. Essentially consists of any and all stakeholders for the project not just team members and staff. This makes resource management one of the most unpredictable responsibilities for the project manager, even more so in an agile environment. There are several processes surrounding proper resource management but, in this post, we’ll be talking about estimating and actually acquiring the necessary resources for your project.
Estimating Resources
One of the main benefits to an agile approach for projects is that as the project and its requirements naturally change, the team, stakeholders, resources, etc. adapt to these changes rather than try to restrict the inevitable evolution of the project. Frequently, trying to prevent these changes or failing to adapt to them might result in a product that resembles what the stakeholders originally had in mind but, not actually what they wanted or just a worse product in general. The problem or benefit depending on the organization is that this possibly constant change requires an equally constant change in project resources. This can make estimating the project’s starting resources somewhat difficult. According to Schwalbe, “a good approach to this is to rely on people that have previous experience with similar projects and that have a great understanding of how their organization allocates resources. Next would be to answer several questions about the project:
How difficult will specific activities be on this project?
Is anything unique in the project’s scope statement that will affect resources?
What is the organization’s history in doing similar activities? Has the organization done similar tasks before? What level of personnel did the work?
Does the organization have people, equipment, and materials that are capable and available for performing the work? Could any organizational policies affect the availability of resources?
Does the organization need to acquire more resources to accomplish the work? Would it make sense to outsource some of the work? Will outsourcing increase or decrease the amount of resources needed and when they will be available?” (Schwalbe, 2018, p. 397)
It is important for these starting estimates to be thoroughly planned out but also to understand that they will most likely change during the life of the project. Using an agile approach means that there also needs to be an understanding in how the organization will handle resource changes as they arise. How hard will it be to allocate more team members if necessary? How much is the organization willing to spend on unforeseen physical resources when they arise? At the end of this estimating process you should have of clear list of activity resource requirements, basis of estimates, project documents updates, and a resource breakdown structure containing all of the project’s resources by category and type. (Schwalbe, p. 397)
Acquiring and Managing Resources
At the end of the day the organization will ultimately decide what resources are assigned to which projects. If Project A more directly reflects the needs and goals of the organization than Project B, then Project A will tend to have considerably greater access to human and physical resources. Human resources tend to be the most expensive resources of any project and naturally need to be the most accurate. It is important to know each team member’s abilities and how they can contribute to the project if necessary to create the best team for the project. It is completely reasonable to lack the necessary skillsets or human resources to complete the project. In this situation, it’s important to determine how difficult and costly it would be to hire on or possibly even find workers with the necessary skillsets. This means that it’s important for the organization to have procedures in place in regard to possibly subcontracting the necessary skilled workers. “Because the Human Resource department is normally responsible for hiring people, project managers must work with their human resource managers to address any problems in recruiting appropriate people. It is also a priority to address retention issues, especially for IT professionals.” (Schwalbe, p. 398) In an agile environment it is even more necessary to have good procedures in place because it is even more likely that the project will evolve into needing unforeseen skillsets.
One common mistake during project scheduling and planning is to not take into account resource availability for a specific process somewhere down the road of the life of the project. This has the potential to bring the project to a halt or add unnecessary costs to the project that could otherwise be used elsewhere in the project. One technique is to use resource loading to gauge what resources are needed during split periods of time. In the example below, the schedule is broken down each month to show how many and which human resources are needed for that month.
(Schwalbe, p. 396)
Once again, in an agile environment this should be updated as soon as changes occur that might alter the predicted schedule of resources. It is the project manager’s responsibility to determine and update the appropriate allocation of resources necessary for project. It is important to remember that in an agile environment, everyone can do their jobs perfectly in projecting, scheduling, and managing resources, and as the project evolves, these original predictions could be entirely inaccurate. It is vital for the project manager to notice and adapt resources and the scheduling of resources to match the current and predicted state of the project.
Bibliography
Schwalbe, K. (2018). Information Technology Project Management. Boston: Cengage.