Project Resource Planning: Techniques and Importance

Project resource planning is crucial for successful project completion. This article discusses the importance of resource planning and techniques to ensure successful project completion. Resource leveling, negotiation, communication flow, and emotional intelligence are discussed in detail. The article also reflects on a resource leveling exercise completed in class.

Running head: PROJECT RESOURCE PLANNING 1
Project Resource Planning
Student’s Name
Institution Affiliations

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Introduction
Project management is a sequential process that entails the application of skills,
methodologies, knowledge as well as experience in order to attain the goals of a project.
Accordingly, this means that there has to be a well-structured plan in place to make sure that
the project is delivered within the specified deadlines, o budget and it has to satisfy the needs
of the client. As a result, the success of a project has to involve the planning of resources.
Therefore, it is the task of the project manager to see to it that the project resources are well
managed to enable its delivery on time, within the deadline and meet the user specifications.
In this essence, it means that resources play a significant part in the completion of any given
project. However, the resources have to be managed most appropriately. Resource
management is a process that calls for the project planning, which is based on the supplies
utilized to generate deliverables (Siddaiah, & Saini, 2016). Thus, resource management
consists of the cost of labor, the general cost of materials as well as the equipment that is to
be used in the competing of the project tasks. In project management there various stages in
project planning such as the initiation, project planning stage, execution stage, project
closure, and completion. Certainly, resource management plays a significant role during the
project planning stage since it involves financial expenses of the resources to be used, and
proposal of the timeframe to accomplish each task. Thus, since it entails teamwork and
individuals for the implementation of the resources to be safe, resource management involves
the signing of roles. However, research studies have shown that most projects are being
delivered late or fail to be completed due to the problem of resources management.
Therefore, resource planning has come to help resolve such problems in project management
through resource leveling practices.
Resource planning

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The most significant part of project planning is making sure that there is a fair
allocation of resources to avoid cases of resources under-allocation and over-allocating which
has been a major cause of conflicts among project teams. As a result of these conflicts which
arise as a result of poor resource management, it has led to the late delivery of projects and
project failure due to resources constraints brought about by resource conflicts. In this light,
these problems call for resource scheduling (Hornstein, 2015). Resource scheduling is one of
the most appropriate ways to ensuring the project is capable of being delivered within the set
deadline, on budget and satisfy the requirements of the client. Certainly, the planning of
resources should be the primary component of any project that wants to succeed. According
to Martinelli, & Milosevic, (2016), the success of any project relies on a well-organized
allocation of resources through effective planning. Accordingly, this planning consists of a
fair allocation of resources to all tasks, milestone, risk management, schedule, quality and
communication since these are the core components of a project team. Similarly, it should
be noted that human beings have the responsibility to ensure that all the resource planning
process works in the desired manner. Consequently, the project manager is required to make
sure that there is proper human resource planning since they play a major role in making sure
their project progresses as planned (Noe, Hollenbeck, Gerhart, & Wright, 2006). Thus, even
if a project allocates resources equally and does not plan how the human resource will utilize
the materials and equipment resources, then it will be a waste of time and money.
As a result, the project manager is required to plan on the use of the project resources
knowing that human resources are the most vital resource. Therefore, the project manager
should try to respond to questions such as:
i. What roles and responsibilities should the human resource perform to support the
progression of the other resources?
ii. What kind of people should the project embrace to enable the completion?

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iii. Which competencies, as well as qualities, should the human resource possess to steer
other resources in a project?
iv. Which kind of person should be in charge of monitoring the execution of resources?
Project Resource Planning Techniques
While there is various resource planning techniques, resource leveling is the most key
because it works to make sure that there are no conflicts amongst different project task.
Resource leveling: Resource leveling is a scheduling decision that is driven by
resource management concepts like limited availability of resources. Resource leveling is a
scheduling course in which the commencement dates, as well as completion dates, are
directed by the limitation of resources (Umble, Haft, & Umble, 2003). Therefore, the core
goal of project resource scheduling is to see to it that resource are not under-allocated or
over-allocated and that there are no problems in the scheduling of resources. A resource is
over-assigned when it is scheduled to perform more tasks than it is needed within the
resource’s schedule. Therefore, resource leveling is a technique used to fix resource over-
allocation. Consequently, resource leveling falls into two categories which include split task
and delay task. The split task is the process of interrupting the schedule of tasks such that
some portion of the task can be carried out as panned while the rest can be done later when
the allocated resource has time. The delay of the task can be leveling delay or delaying
resource allocation to a task. Basically, the technique to be used depending on the project’s
limitations based on the projected availability of resources, the date of project completion,
budget, as well as the amount of flexibility available for scheduling tasks (Lock, 2017). In
order to avoid extension of the project time, it is advisable to avoid delaying or extending
task found on the critical path. Thus, the project manager, as well as the project team, should
know the float of tasks before making adjustments on resources.

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Negotiation. It is the responsibility of the project manager to negotiate with the
project owner, the project team as well as suppliers and stakeholders. Negotiation plays a
major part in supporting the project to progress in the desired direction by aid in averting
frustrations amongst the project teams.
Well-structured communication flow: Project involves the interaction of people. Thus,
the project manager should always strive to see to it that there is clear communication flow
regarding the progress of the project (Kaiser, El Arbi, & Ahlemann, 2015). The well-
structured flow of information makes the project team work knowing that what they are doing
is in line with the project schedule as well as the resource plan. Also, the project manager
should regularly communicate with the project teams to know if the project is moving in the
right direction.
Emotional intelligence: since projects are run by individuals they have both mental
and physiological reactions to both the internal stimuli as well as the surrounding. As a result
project managers should understand and also recognise the emotions of their project members
to be in a better position to respond to the project owner, project teams and stakeholders.
Moving Activities within Available Float Time
Research has shown that a critical path approach is the most used resource leveling
practice by project managers. Nonetheless, there are other practices such as crashing and
tracking. The critical path is the longest sequence of activities in a project resource plan that
has to be accomplished within the set project deadline. The activity on the critical path cannot
begin not unless its predecessor activity is complete (Somers, & Nelson, 2001). On the other
hand, crashing involves the assigning a task with extra resources to quicken the work
performance to get the project delivered on the due date (Carstens, Richardson, & Smith,
2016). The tracking procedure carries out a critical path task. However,t it takes much time.

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Reflection upon the Component of the Exercise Completed in Class
During the resource planning in the class, the exercise was performed in the most
organised manner such that we chose a project manager from ourselves who was in control of
the whole project team. Therefore, the project manager took the role of the project leaders
and grouped the class members into ten groups (project teams). I would like to say the project
teams worked in a collaborative way such that every individual was committed to the project
tasks to see to it that the project was a success in the long run. On the same note, all the
participants were well behaved as there were cases of misbehaving amongst the project
teams. The critical path of the project in the case of our resource leveling plan was path
A+C+E+H+I = 26, which cost of $9100. This path required twenty-six resources to be
accomplished. Accordingly, the resource leveling practices were very enjoyable since it is not
only significant to the completion of the course, but it is also a great way of enlightening us
about the real-world events. The project was able to be completed within the set timeframe
that is sixty four days as a result of working together amongst our respective teams to bring
the project to completion by the due date. I would say that it is because of the knowledge and
skills on resource levelling that help us finish the project successfully. Moreover, I realised
that as a project manager the most important task is to ensure that all tasks are well planned
for during the initiation phase of the project because if things go wrong at this stage, it will
mean the entire project fails. Therefore, the project leaders strived to ensure that we all took
part in the project through a constant communication that was taking place between the
project teams.
Resources levelling activities

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References

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Noe, R. A., Hollenbeck, J. R., Gerhart, B., & Wright, P. M. (2006). Human resource
management. China People's University Press.
Umble, E. J., Haft, R. R., & Umble, M. M. (2003). Enterprise resource planning:
Implementation procedures and critical success factors. European journal of
operational research, 146(2), 241-257.
Kaiser, M. G., El Arbi, F., & Ahlemann, F. (2015). Successful project portfolio management
beyond project selection techniques: Understanding the role of structural
alignment. International Journal of Project Management, 33(1), 126-139.
Martinelli, R. J., & Milosevic, D. Z. (2016). Project management toolbox: tools and
techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The integration of project management and organizational change
management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2),
291-298.
Carstens, D. S., Richardson, G. L., & Smith, R. B. (2016). Project management tools and
techniques: A practical guide. CRC Press.
Lock, D. (2017). The essentials of project management. Routledge.
Siddaiah, R., & Saini, R. P. (2016). A review on planning, configurations, modeling, and
optimization techniques of hybrid renewable energy systems for off-grid
applications. Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, 58, 376-396.
Somers, T. M., & Nelson, K. (2001, January). The impact of critical success factors across
the stages of enterprise resource planning implementations. In System Sciences, 2001.
Proceedings of the 34th Annual Hawaii International Conference on (pp. 10-pp).
IEEE.

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