5 Tips for Scheduling Resources |
5 Tips for Scheduling Resources
by ProjectManager.com
Projects are normally done by a group of people. As a Project Manager, you will need to allocate tasks to the people on your project team. If you try to do it all yourself, or you don't allocate the right tasks to the right team members, you will seriously slow down your project. You can avoid this by scheduling resources effectively.
Tip 1: Assign resources to tasks
The first thing to do is to assign people to work on your project tasks. Create resource profiles for each of your team members and then you can allocate the right tasks to the right person. If you don't know who should be taking the lead on a task, ask! Talk to the individual or their manager. And if you do get it wrong, they will no doubt tell you and you can quickly assign someone else.
Tip 2: Check who has time available
Using the resource planning features in ProjectManager.com makes it easy to see who has time available to take on more tasks. These team members are under-allocated, so they have some slack in their day to do additional work. That can either be on your project, or on another project.
Tip 3: Check who has too much work
Some people on your project team may have too many tasks allocated to them. Again, you can use the resource planning reports and views to check who on the team is overstretched. Having too much to do can put additional stresses on your team members and reduce morale in the team, so it is good to know that with a few clicks you can see who might be struggling with a large workload.
Tip 4: Monitor progress regularly
Things change on projects all the time, and someone who had too much to do last week may have made lots of progress and is now managing their tasks effectively within the available time. Equally, someone who was under-utilized may find that suddenly they have a lot to do as a task has turned out to be bigger than anyone expected.
Check your resource scheduling reports regularly to ensure that the team is making progress and that everyone has a good balance of work. You'll also be able to identify when someone becomes available to pick up new tasks.
Tip 5: Reallocate tasks as necessary
If someone has too many tasks, you can reallocate some of their work to another person who has the experience to do the job. Talk to both people before you make the change online in your project management software, so they know what to expect when they next check their task allocations.
Reallocating tasks is a way of spreading the workload across all the members of the team and any other experts, so it is a good way to keep morale high and make the best use of everyone's skills.
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