Why the frustration? Why are people so often unavailable for projects? The answer lies in the misconception that resource planning starts when a project is approved and ready to go. If you think about it, that’s way too late! It’s like throwing orders at a manufacturing floor, without doing any floor planning. Would anyone operate a factory that way? Of course not.

Now, people are not equipment on a factory floor, but they do share one important trait—limited capacity. Indeed, while equipment can potentially operated 24 hours a day, most people would rather work eight. So, it’s even more important to recognize and plan for this important constraint.

Beginning

Let’s start by backing up the process to when projects are just an idea. Most project-driven organizations take in project requests. These are simply ideas for projects with some level of definition around them. And, if you were to do a rough order of magnitude estimate on the effort for all those requests, you would most likely find that they would swamp the department’s staffing levels many times over.

So, the first task is to find out how much capacity exists. At its most basic, this is the number of people multiplied by 40 hours per week. You could get a little more sophisticated and bucket these resources by department, team, or another meaningful organizational attribute that lines up with the types of projects. You could also take into account non-project work such as administrative tasks, support work, and other big-bucket items. For purposes of demonstration, let’s just assume a rough capacity of 100 people equal 4,000 hours per week.

The next task will be to add up all those requests. How many are in the queue, and how much effort do they represent? You could do a detailed analysis but, for many organizations, this would eat up more time than is available for project work! A better solution is to scorecard the requests, or create a ROM (rough order of magnitude) estimate, that includes effort and duration. Given this, the effort per week can be calculated for each request. Summing them up reveals total demand. Let’s assume in our example adds up to 10,000 hours per week.

We now see there are 10,000 hours of demand going after 4,000 hours of supply—2.5 times capacity! In our experience, this is not unusual. So, before undertaking that detailed analysis by role, we might as well cut the requests down to no more that 4,000 hours. Why analyze 2.5 times more work than can possibly be done?

That’s the first step; matching project intake with capacity planning. It’s important to note that this is really a portfolio process, as requests should be considered against capacity as a slate, rather than one project at a time. Done ad-hoc, churn is reintroduced as each new request is considered and re-prioritized against the currently active list. Done as a slate, the prioritization and culling are done before there are active projects to interrupt.

Middle

Let’s move on to the next step: role planning. This is a more detailed analysis, usually undertaken during the planning stage. This is the more traditional detailed planning by skill set, one project at a time. When the planning is complete, it is submitted for approval. At this point, availability of skill sets is considered. It’s important to note that this should be measured, as well. It is not enough to simply ask resource managers, “Do you have anyone available?” Anecdotal evidence doesn’t reveal a complete picture. This should be a metrics driven exercise; with the total capacity and availability measured for each major role or skill set. So, role planning is matched with project planning.