How do you handle resources on your projects? How do resources get assigned to your projects?

Resource allocation is vital to meeting project deadlines and project budgets. Understanding resource management will help you build a framework for your project team. Start by identifying the roles, and responsibilities of these roles, necessary for meeting your project goals. Do NOT start by identifying the people you would like on your project. Starting with specific people in mind can be detrimental to your project even when you are familiar with their work ethic and performance. There may be other forces that prevent a specific person from being a good fit. For example, they may command a higher rate because of their performance. This rate may cause your project to exceed its budget. So, start with roles and responsibilities, and begin to map out the reporting relationships along with the skill sets needed for these positions.

Once the roles and responsibilities are defined, you must begin mapping out who will fill these roles. However, another factor to take into account is what type of organizational structure your organization has in place. There are basically four types of organizational structures – Functional, Matrix, Projectized, and Composite.
Functional – Hierarchy where each employee has one clear supervisor
Matrix – There are 3 types of Matrix Organizational Structures
1) Weak – In this structure, the Project Manager is more of a coordinator or expeditor
2) Balanced – The project coordinator shares responsibility with the Functional Managers
3) Strong – In this structure, there is a full time Project Manager dedicated with considerable authority and a full-time project administrative staff
Projectized – In this structure, team members are collocated and more of the organizations resources are involved in project work. Meaning, the team is formed with a specific project in mind and could be disbanded once the project is complete.
Composite – Most modern organizations create a special team which acts independently to handle a project.

Understanding your organizational structure will help you understand the authority of the Project Manager and the reporting relationships of the resources dedicated to the project. This will also help to determine how resources are selected or assigned to a project.

For best results, a project should be staffed much like an open position is filled within an organization. A potential candidate’s work experience, interests, characteristics and availability should all be taken into account when deciding whether or not they would make a good fit for the project.

Staffing the project is just the first step. Once the project is staffed and everyone understands their role and their responsibilities, you must then take on the task of actively managing these resources throughout the life of the project. Using Gantt charts is an effective tool for managing task assignments. But, what about all the other “little” things? How do you resolve conflicts between individuals? How do you keep people motivated?

There are five key managerial skills need to address these types of problems. They are Leadership, Communication, Negotiation, Problem Solving, and Influence. Each of these skill plays an important part in managing people and understanding the social aspects of a team. After all, these are not robots or machines dedicated to making widgets. These are people with opinions and emotions that can be very strong and have huge impacts, both positive and negative, to a project.