Resource management

In organizational studies, resource management is the efficient and effective development of an organization's resources when they are needed. Such resources may include financial resources, inventory, human skills, production resources, or information technology (IT) and natural resources. In organizational studies, resource management is the efficient and effective development of an organization's resources when they are needed. Such resources may include financial resources, inventory, human skills, production resources, or information technology (IT) and natural resources. In the realm of project management, processes, techniques and philosophies as to the best approach for allocating resources have been developed. These include discussions on functional vs. cross-functional resource allocation as well as processes espoused by organizations like the Project Management Institute (PMI) through their Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK) methodology of project management. Resource management is a key element to activity resource estimating and project human resource management. Both are essential components of a comprehensive project management plan to execute and monitor a project successfully. As is the case with the larger discipline of project management, there are resource management software tools available that automate and assist the process of resource allocation to projects and portfolio resource transparency including supply and demand of resources. The goal of these tools typically is to ensure that: (i) there are employees within our organization with required specific skill set and desired profile required for a project, (ii) decide the number and skill sets of new employees to hire, and (iii) allocate the workforce to various projects. Within professional services and consulting organizations, the effectiveness of these tools and processes is typically monitored by measuring billable utilization rate. Large organizations usually have a defined corporate resource management process which mainly guarantees that resources are never over-allocated across multiple projects. Peter Drucker wrote of the need to focus resources, abandoning a less promising initiatives for every new project taken on, as fragmentation inhibits results. One resource management technique is resource leveling. It aims at smoothing the stock of resources on hand, reducing both excess inventories and shortages. The required data are: the demands for various resources, forecast by time period into the future as far as is reasonable, as well as the resources' configurations required in those demands, and the supply of the resources, again forecast by time period into the future as far as is reasonable. The goal is to achieve 100% utilization but that is very unlikely, when weighted by important metrics and subject to constraints, for example: meeting a minimum service level, but otherwise minimizing cost. A Project Resource Allocation Matrix (PRAM) is maintained to visualize the resource allocations against various projects.