How to Make a Results-Driven Resource Management Plan in 9 Steps

A resource management plan is a strategic document that outlines how a company or project utilizes and allocates its available resources to achieve its key objectives. These resources can include personnel, financial resources, equipment, materials, and time.

How to allocate resources in project management with the help of such a plan?

In this article, we describe how to prepare a professional resource management plan and improve resource allocation in project management following certain steps and rules.

Let’s get more about it.

What does a typical resource management plan include?

A typical resource management plan usually includes:

• Resource Inventory: listing all assets required for project completion.
• Allocation strategy: assigning individuals or departments to tasks.
• Resource schedule: timelines for resource usage.
• Project organization chart: a visual representation of schedules. For example, an online Gantt chart.
• Time tracking: monitoring resource timeframes.
• Cost estimates: budget considerations for each resource.
• Contingency plan: addressing shortages or unexpected changes.
• Roles and responsibilities: clearly defined roles and duties.
• Performance metrics: establishing KPIs for resource management.

What are the advantages of a resource management plan?

When you work on creating a professional resource management plan in project management, it provides you with numerous advantages. A picture below compiles these advantages in one list.

After these basic facts about a resource management plan, you can start to prepare your own.

Steps to create a resource management plan

Creating a flawless resource management plan in project management lacks a definitive formula or miraculous blueprint. Experienced PM professionals draw upon their expertise, while those new to project management often rely on existing guidelines for effective planning.

Nonetheless, both groups can benefit from following a structured approach with defined stages.

Let’s break it down step by step; here’s how.

Step 1: Resource identification

The first step in creating a resource management plan is to fully understand all project requirements and available resources in the company. This involves assessing project scope, key objectives, finances, and timelines.

Then you need to determine your resources — they are typically grouped into the following categories: personnel, workspace, materials, tools, and budget.

Step 2: Compliance with your organization’s resource policy

Once you comprehend your resource requirements, it becomes critical to ensure their alignment with your company’s policy. The primary objective is to conform to your organization’s procedures and workflows while minimizing disruptions to projects.

Step 3: Organizational chart and resource visualization

Professional visualization greatly enhances the resource planning process. Advanced resource management tools streamline this process by centralizing data for easy access and viewing.

Modern resource management software enables teams to delve into specific resources to comprehend their availability, roles,skills, and rates.

If you are looking for an appropriate tool for this purpose, then GanttPRO is an excellent solution.

The platform suits PM professionals and enthusiasts who need a comprehensive online tool for resource management. It streamlines task scheduling, optimizes resource allocation, fosters team collaboration, and more. It consolidates essential PM features, ensuring users have a unified project overview.

Now, let’s delve into how this Gantt chart maker facilitates resource management planning in the following steps.

The power of GanttPRO for creating a resource management plan

Project management experts take advantage of GanttPRO in various fields, including software development, event planning, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, construction, and marketing resource management, among others. To effectively plan and oversee your project resources, you must initially break down your project into manageable activities and tasks, each with a defined budget, deadline, start, and end date.

GanttPRO offers a work breakdown structure (WBS) that simplifies task organization without additional effort.

With a well-defined task structure, you may find the need to establish connections between many of them. Our user-friendly drag-and-drop feature enables you to visualize task dependencies effortlessly, similar to placing project milestones on a timeline.

Once you’ve consolidated your tasks, you can invite project participants and allocate additional resources.

GanttPRO users can easily invite team members, define their roles, set budgets, and manage calendars. Managing virtual resources is quick and straightforward. You can also specify costs for all resources, whether by hour, per item, or or just cost.

Step 4: Allocating resources to tasks

Once tasks are well-organized, you can easily assign appropriate resources to specific activities. Assigning resources and managing their work hours to prevent overloading or downtime is a straightforward process. You can assign one or multiple resources to each task.

Step 5: Selecting the optimal resource allocation method.

Professional resource allocation methods aid in resolving resource conflicts and preventing asset underutilization or overuse. They mitigate missed deadlines, work disruptions, and project delays.

We can recall some famous approaches such as CPM (Critical Path Method), CCM (Critical Chain Method), Resource Leveling, and Resource Smoothing.

GanttPRO facilitates the implementation of resource allocation methods and supports project asset utilization through a user-friendly Gantt diagram.

Step 6: Deadline management

Deadline management is a vital aspect for project managers to consider when formulating their resource organization plan. It’s important to note that a single missed deadline can adversely impact project performance and disrupt your colleagues’ work.

GanttPRO simplifies schedule management, deadline monitoring, team activity tracking, prevention of project delays, and centralized project data analysis.

Step 7: Workload organization

Monitoring resource workloads is essential to ensure budget compliance. Teams that consistently review and optimize resource allocation enhance project value and achieve greater returns. This approach also mitigates employee burnout.

With GanttPRO, you can efficiently oversee resource workloads centrally. Employee workloads are automatically calculated, allowing for seamless task redistribution among team members when necessary.

The user-friendly drag-and-drop feature simplifies the process of reallocating project resources, making it highly advantageous for addressing resource overload or underutilization.

Step 8: Possible changes

Adjusting project resources may entail reallocating them to prioritize high-value or high-priority projects. This might involve utilizing previously scheduled team members.

This reallocation forms the core of the Resource leveling method, as previously mentioned.

Due to its dynamic nature, this aspect of generating a resource management plan remains relevant throughout the project’s life cycle. It underscores the importance of a project management tool that can depict resource availability and facilitate task assignment seamlessly.

Step 9: Reporting and post-project analysis

The process of performing post-project reviews plays a pivotal role in gaining insights for future endeavors and managing upcoming projects. It provides an opportunity to evaluate projected resources and schedules against the actual assets utilized.

Furthermore, reporting is a crucial aspect of this process. With GanttPRO’s real-time information synchronization, the cumbersome task of manual report compilation becomes obsolete. Users can effortlessly generate two types of reports: time logs by individuals and budget analyses.

Create an effective resource management plan and win

A well-prepared project resource management plan is crucial for effective work management and process coordination. While it may appear time-intensive to create a comprehensive and detailed plan, the clear advantages and utility it offers make the effort worthwhile.

Powerful software solutions such as GanttPRO offer advanced online tools for professional scheduling, real-time tracking, and analysis of resource plans.

Is this information enough for you to create a great resource management plan?

If you want more details and insights, you can read the full version of this article here: https://blog.ganttpro.com/en/resource-management-plan/.

You will find more complete descriptions of the steps, expert comments, examples, and useful statistics there.