Quick Summary: Efficiently managing and distributing resources is of utmost importance for professional services companies striving for sustainable success. Through meticulous resource management, businesses can lower expenses, enhance productivity, elevate the caliber of their offerings, and gain a competitive edge by becoming more adaptable and nimble.

Keep reading to learn about effective resource management strategies that will assist you in assigning the most suitable individuals to the appropriate jobs at the optimal moment.   

Top 10 Resource Management Best Practices:

Understand which resources are in short supply and focus on them:

Frequently, it is possible to utilize the principle of the 80/20 rule, which essentially states that 80% of the outcomes (or limitations in resources) stem from 20% of the resources. These particular individuals are the ones who are in great demand for carrying out the tasks.

Direct your attention towards these limited resources and strategize based on their accessibility to prevent any obstacles or avoidable delays.

Agree on a common approach to prioritizing work across shared resources:

Develop a predetermined system for scoring and evaluating to aid in making objective decisions, instead of succumbing to the issue of giving preferential treatment to those who complain the loudest.

Track unexpected tasks that can consume your resources and cause unanticipated delays.

Remember that overwhelming individuals with too many responsibilities can result in a decrease in quality and overall productivity.

Embrace different ways of working across the organization and resources:

There are often numerous workflows and teams within a company that may work better using certain techniques. Make sure the systems and chosen methods match up and streamline operations. More standardized summarizations at higher tiers can give the metrics necessary for a full perspective of your company. This allows your company to arrange, direct, and complete work – making use of a variety of techniques like conventional or milestone-based, repetitive, Agile, and cooperative efforts.

Realize resource management is an ongoing process:

Understand that disagreements will happen because unforeseen events and alterations are unavoidable (and occur more often than we prefer!). Collaborate to settle disputes over resources based on your urgent and long-term priorities.

Manage work and resources using a blend of granularities:

While the amount of detail needed for planning, assigning tasks, and tracking time may vary, it’s important to find the right balance for each case. When planning projects, a very granular approach with lots of specifics often works best. But for time reporting, a higher-level summary view can simplify things for those entering time and increase accuracy. When assigning people to work long-term, broad high-level allocations are usually sufficient, while short-term assignments tend to require more precise detailed planning since near-term work is clearer. The key is to utilize the appropriate level of detail for planning, resource assignment, and time reporting based on the situation.

Plan work:

Look at traditional tasks that have defined start and end dates as well as time spans for formally specified work and more informal lists for handling lightweight jobs.

Make sure projects and other tasks support the strategic results they are intended to achieve.  

Use automated workflows when possible to decrease administrative duties.

Manage resource assignments:

When introducing resource management to your organization, it can be helpful to begin with broader categories at the project or phase level. However, it’s important to recognize that different groups or resources may have unique requirements and limitations. For instance, if your database administrators are frequently overworked and shared between projects, it might be wise to incorporate more detailed planning to avoid conflicts. Above all, it’s crucial to remain adaptable and flexible in your resource management approach, allowing it to shift and change as your organization’s needs and obstacles evolve.

Report time:

It is important to keep in mind that certain groups may be hesitant to report their time, so it’s best to keep the process uncomplicated and straightforward, especially in the initial stages. Additionally, you can make it easier for your team members to adopt time tracking by allowing them to use their preferred execution tool. To evaluate performance and make better plans for the future, make use of real data to identify patterns and trends.

Apply assignment types that align with your business needs:

For long-term planning or when you don’t yet know which people will be assigned, use unnamed resources based on job roles. This allows flexibility in resource allocation down the road. 

When planning and prioritizing work over the medium-term, soft-booking specific people by name can be helpful, while still allowing some flexibility in assignments.  

For detailed short-term plans when you know exactly which people will be doing which tasks, go ahead and hard-book those named individuals. This locks in their time and commits them to the work.

Account for non-project time:

When planning work shortly as well as farther out, make sure to factor in administrative tasks, vacation days, sick time, and other paid time off that reduce available working hours. Also build in a way to track unforeseen project work that comes up, since failing to do so will hide how much capacity is lost to these surprise duties. Recognize that regular activities like responding to emails, attending meetings, and other administrative work will naturally eat into the time available for projects. Restating the key points differently, allow for admin and personal leave when scheduling both short and long-term. Have a method to capture unexpected project needs, or you’ll miss how much effort they require. Understand that common tasks like emails and meetings will take up project time.

Conclusion  

Managing resources skillfully is vital for any organization to endure. The prosperity of your company hinges on adept resource management. Our world contains abundant resources that organizations must administer proficiently to persevere. For businesses, resources are their sustenance, and lacking or poorly governing them leads to failure. It’s imperative to master resource management since resources are frequently scarce. How an organization utilizes its limited resources impacts its destiny. With competent resource stewardship, companies can thrive even with constraints. But without it, they will flounder.

Brain Inventory offers solutions to help organizations at any stage of resource management, from those just beginning to those looking to take their efforts to the next level. With a data-driven, company-wide approach grounded in experience collaborating with customers worldwide, Brain Inventory can assist your organization in optimizing resource management in a way that frees up capacity for innovation and change.