Impact of Poor Resource Planning on the Projects

 

Resource planning is a very critical part of any project. It is very important to have an optimized resource planning for the project. The ability and the experience of the project manager determines how optimized the resource planning is. Thus the role of the project manager is very vital for the success of any project. It not only the number of the resources, the project manager has to allocate the resources in terms of time, budget, skills and technology based on the need of the project.

Improper resource planning impacts the cost of the project to a great extent. If you allocate more resources for the project then required, the cost of the project increases unnecessarily. While if less resources are allocated for the project, it over burdens the allocated resources and they are not able to manage the work. This results in the extension of the project duration which again impacts the cost of the project.

Another impact is the allocation of incorrect resources with different skills. Every project has various processes and technology involved. For the success of the project it is very important to allocate the best resources, trained in the particular skills and technology as required in the project. But if the project manager allocates a wrong resource with a different skill or a resource with less experience to a critical task, it is surely going to impact the quality of the project. Sometimes to save the cost the project managers allocate the existing resources only for different tasks, instead of bringing a new skilled resource, even if they are not experienced in it. This also impacts the quality of the project and sometimes the customer may ask for the rework on that segment.

If the quality of the project delivered is very poor, the customers do not give the sign off and demand for the complete re work or scrap the project. This impacts the budget, cost and the time of the project.

For example, during the requirement gathering phase, it is very important that a skilled business analyst, is allocated for this task. But sometimes, in order to save the cost, the project manager allocates the less experienced functional analyst who may not even have much knowledge about the client’s business. This results in poor requirement gathering, which further impacts the entire project in terms of cost, quality and time. Thus in order to save some cost, the project has to incur major loss.

Resource estimation is also one of the key factor impacting the success of the project. The project manager has to estimate the resources required during the different phases of the project at the beginning of the project itself. In this way he can raise the necessary requests to get the resources before the start of that phase. If his estimation fails, the resource will not be available during the required time which will impact the duration of the project and hence the cost.

Hence it is very important that the project manager, allocates proper resources with required skills as per the need of the project at proper time. One should not think of short term goals and try to cut the cost by not allocating required resources for the project. These short term gains can impact the future of the project.

This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.