Project Resource Planning: Strategies for Effective Project Outcomes

This project solution delves into the critical aspects of project resource planning, emphasizing the importance of effective resource allocation for successful project completion within budget and schedule. It covers human resource planning, team management, and techniques such as resource leveling to address over-allocation and under-allocation issues. The document highlights the significance of emotional intelligence and negotiation skills for project managers in fostering team collaboration and stakeholder engagement. It also discusses resource leveling practices like the critical path method and crashing, illustrated by a resource leveling exercise. The project underscores the necessity of structured communication and a committed team for successful resource planning, providing valuable insights for project managers and students alike. Desklib provides more solved assignments and resources for students.

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

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Introduction
The chief role of project management is to ensure that there is proper management of
resources to accomplish the task effectively, on budget, and schedule. Scheduling of
resources entails equipment and facilities is a complex task. According to Harrison, & Lock,
(2017), the scholars define resource scheduling as the procedure of assigning resources to
tasks of a project to allow for optimal use and regulating of the resources by the project
teams. Therefore, project management includes scheduling of resources and resource
allocation about resources availability, capacity, and effort in addition to the scope of the
project. Research studies have shown that most of the projects that fail to be delivered on
time or experiences trouble come as a result of over-allocating resources or under-allocation
of resources on tasks. As a result, of over-allocating or under-allocating resource impact on
client satisfaction, profitability, as well as the project team and project manager trust.
Consequently, effective resource planning plays a significant role in solving problems related
to resource availability as well as work capability in a range of ways. Therefore, resource
scheduling aids in ensuring the project achieve customer satisfaction, timely delivery of the
project and in accordance with the set budget.
Project Resource planning
The first thing before beginning any activity in project management calls for resource
planning. The success of any project depends upon carefully planned resource allocation to
project tasks, schedule, milestone, communication, quality as well as risks, which offers the
project team a plan at the time of execution (Kaiser, El Arbi, & Ahlemann, 2015).
In a project, it is human beings that make work to be done thus it is essential to plan
for the project team. Nevertheless, project resources do not only involve people alone it also

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entails equipment, as well as the material required for the successful accomplishment of a
project (Verzuh, 2015). Therefore, in this light, it means that resource planning even though
human resource tends to revolve around people or staffing management it should be noted
that there are also other resources that should not be taken lightly.
Human Resource Planning
In this case, the plan makes attempts to answer some question in a more precise and
detailed manner.
 What type of individuals are needed for the completion of the project that is the
necessary competencies are qualities that they should possess?
 What should these people perform that is the roles as well as responsibilities to be
undertaken?
 To whom will the project team report to?
As a result, the human resource plan ascertains and document the staffing needs
which include roles, skills, and duties in addition to creating a reporting structure of the
project resources. Also, it gives the staffing plan that specifies the timeline of getting hold of
staff and release of staff.
Managing the team: For the successful realization of the project requirements, it is
vital to be in possession of a high-performing project team which should comprise of people
who are motivated as well as technically skilled to add to the success of the project (DuBois,
Koch, Hanlon, Nyatuga, & Kerr, 2015). Thus, the most vital role played by a project manager
is to support the capacity of every team member to donate to the project and at the same time
fostering personal development and accomplishment. Consequently, each person has to be
inspired to share their ideas and work as a team towards a common objective. Therefore, in
the process of performance assessment, the project manager collects the necessary

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information to ensure that the team has sufficient skills and knowledge to develop a
constructive team setting. That means that there has to be a healthy communication
atmosphere to enable proper working to ensure accountability. Thus, project team
management involves project performance and appraisal of the project team. Performance
reports act a base for a managerial decision on the manner in which to control the project
team, and project performance entails the project’s teamwork outcomes like work behavior
like punctuality, quality and quantity results as well as other work-related characteristics like
initiative and collaboration.
After undertaking project team performance reviews, the project manager has to do
the following:
Provide feedback to the project teams on how well they have performed on realizing the
project goals.
Give feedback to the project teams regarding there areas that they weak or could do better.
Take corrective measures to address problems with project team performing at or below the
minimum project expectations.
Rewarding the best project teams to encourage their unrelenting brilliance.
Techniques for Managing Resources
The most crucial resource management technique is resource leveling, which targets
at smoothening the stock of resources at hand, by ensuring that there is no over-allocating or
under-allocating of resources.
Resource Levelling: Resource leveling is utilized to assess the unbalanced utilization of
resources particularly people and equipment over time and to resolve under-allocation and
over-allocation conflicts (Carstens, Richardson, & Smith, 2016). During the time of project

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planning the project manager makes attempts to schedule a particular task simultaneously. If
it happens that more resources like individuals or machines are required than they are
available or perhaps a certain individual has to take part in more than one task, the task has to
be rescheduled logically to regulate the constraint. Hence, resource leveling at the time of
planning helps in resolving such conflicts. In this sense, resource leveling works to balance
the workload of the main resources over the project course typically at the expenditure of the
traditional constrictions that is scope, budget and time. When utilizing specifically considered
project software, resource leveling generally means resolving conflicts through the allowance
of the software to calculate interruptions and bring up to date project tasks in an automated
way. Project management software resource leveling requires the delaying of tasks until the
availability of resources.
Working with people: Since projects involve working with individuals, the
interactions involves dealing with them in an emotional as well as logical way. Therefore,
successful working relations among individuals begin with the appreciation of their emotions
in addition to the manner in which they interact with setting goals, personality, negotiations
and leadership styles.
Emotional intelligence: Emotions are both physiological and psychological reactions
to environmental and internal stimuli. Thus, project managers are supposed to understand and
appreciate their project teams’ emotions to be in the position to suitably respond to the
project team, client and project surrounding. Certainly. Emotional intelligence involves self-
control, self-awareness, relationship management and understanding (Martinelli, &
Milosevic, 2016). Indeed, emotions are significant to producing energy around an idea,
developing a commitment to goals, in addition to developing high-performing teams.
Consequently, emotional intelligence is a significant filed of the project manager’s capacity
to enhance trust amongst the project members and the customer. It is a vital aspect in the

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developing of credibility and free and open negotiation with stakeholders of the project. As a
result, emotional intelligence is crucial for project managers. Hence, the more complicated
the project profile, the more significant the project manager’s emotional intelligence should
be to enables the success of a project.
Negotiation: Negotiation is a procedure employed constructing a mutually acceptable
result when the desired outcome for every party conflicts. The project managers are tasked
with the responsibility of negotiating with the project team, the project owner, project
stakeholders and vendors (Devaux, 2015). Therefore, negotiation is an essential skill for
developing support for the project and avoiding frustrations between the parties involved, as
it could result in delaying or even causing failure of the project. In project management
negotiation calls for the following principles:
 Focusing on a common goal. This is ensured by solely paying attention to the project
by avoiding to focus on differences but being much open to identify solutions which
are acceptable.
 Separating individuals from problems. Project managers strive to see to it that they
frame the discussion most desirably to facilitate negotiations to look for a new
outcome.
 Providing options that enhance shared interests (DuBois, Koch, Hanlon, Nyatuga, &
Kerr, 2015). Project managers work to ensure that the projects common goals are
well-understood by disallowing solutions that do not match the interest of both parties
and support solutions that serve both sides interests.
 Nurture result in accordance to standard criteria. The success of a project is built on a
standard criterion, which means that both parties have to advance a universal project
success definition.

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Resource Levelling Practices
The most widely used resource leveling practices by project managers include fast
critical path method and tracking and crashing. The critical path shows both the longest and
the shortest duration paths in a connected diagram that is followed to complete a specific
project. Crashing entails the allocation of additional resources to the available project
resources with the intention of getting the work performed in a fast way. However, this
practice is associated with experiencing additional costs such as labor and equipment. Lastly
but not least the fast-tracking process performs a critical path task, but then it takes more
time.
Resources Levelling Exercise
The resource planning exercise takes 64 days to come to completion. The resources
needed for the project in total is 46. The activity that is allocated the highest number of
resources is an activity I with eight resources while activities C and F are allocated the least
resources, which are two resources. During the resources leveling process, we used the
critical path resources leveling process which is shown in the diagram drawn using hands on
the next page. As a result, the process of project resource leveling exercise in class was well-
conducted through the leadership of one of my team members who acted as the project
manager coordinating all the project activities (Kendrick, 2015). There was well-structured
communication, emotional intelligence and well as negotiation when developing different
projects tasks as outlined in the tables and figures below. Accordingly, based on the resource
planning in class I would like to say that it was quite an educating task that has not only
helped me now but it will be of great importance in future since as a project manager one
needs the knowledge on resource planning. The exercise was successful because well-

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structured communication flows from the project manager across to the project teams. I can
say that for the team that I was working with they were well-behaved and committed to the
project, which led to the successful allocation of resources to each project task. The project
comprised of ten teams, and seven project tasks working to accomplish the project. The
critical path for the resource leveling exercise is A+C+E+H+I = 26 because it is the longest
path having the highest number of resource requirements. Moreover, I found it enjoyable
taking part in the resource leveling exercise since all the project team members showed a lot
of interest in the exercise which made is a success. Below are the various resource planning
activities that we performed regarding to resource planning.

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References
Carstens, D. S., Richardson, G. L., & Smith, R. B. (2016). Project management tools and
techniques: A practical guide. CRC Press.
Devaux, S. A. (2015). Total project control: a practitioner's guide to managing projects as
investments. CRC Press.
DuBois, M., Koch, J., Hanlon, J., Nyatuga, B., & Kerr, N. (2015). Leadership Styles of
Effective Project Managers: Techniques and Traits to Lead High-Performance
Teams. Journal of Economic Development, Management, IT, Finance &
Marketing, 7(1).
Harrison, F., & Lock, D. (2017). Advanced project management: a structured approach.
Routledge.
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.
Kendrick, T. (2015). Identifying and managing project risk: essential tools for failure-
proofing your project. Amacom.
Martinelli, R. J., & Milosevic, D. Z. (2016). Project management toolbox: tools and
techniques for the practicing project manager. John Wiley & Sons.
Verzuh, E. (2015). The fast forward MBA in project management. John Wiley & Sons.