Resource Allocation in Project Management: A Guide to the Basics

Anyone in a project management role knows the importance of avoiding waste. When it comes to meeting deadlines and working within a budget, every move you make as project manager contributes to the bottom line: efficiency gives you breathing room, and a failure to maximize your resources puts you behind. The ability to excel in resource allocation is going to put you ahead of the pack when it comes to efficiency, ensuring that your projects consistently meet targets and keep your clients happy.

What Is Resource Allocation?

First things first: resource allocation in project management is all about taking the resources you’ve been given—supplies, budget, workforce—and deploying them in a manner that benefits your bottom line. Sounds simple, right? In theory it is, but studies show that most project managers struggle in this area, with far too many failing to meet targets because of this skill deficit.

How Do I Allocate Resources in a Project?

So how do you keep your team from falling short when so many find this challenging? As with anything in project management, proper planning goes a long way toward making sure your resources go the extra mile. Taking the extra time to survey available resources at the start of your project can save you valuable time as the project progresses.

Get a detailed inventory of what is available to you, be aware of the needs of the project and your team members’ unique abilities to meet them, and anticipate any challenges that may arise so that you are prepared for any issues. Having a plan and sticking to it—while also maintaining a certain flexibility—will ensure that you get the most out of what is available to you.

Potential Challenges in Resource Management

Now that we have established how to stop getting in your own way, what are some other challenges that might make it difficult to properly allocate resources? The client is the most valuable part of any equation, but often they can be a source of challenges, whether they mean to or not. This frequently looks like a lack of clear communication or shifting goals/scope, both of which can throw a wrench into things on your end of the project.

Anything that forces you to deviate from your original plan is a challenge, and while there are some speed bumps that are unavoidable, establishing clear parameters with your client from the start can help minimize detours.

Best Practices for Resource Allocation

Just as communicating with your client is important, communicating clearly with your team is essential. In order to best make use of your resources, providing clear, concrete expectations to your teammates will help ensure that they are trimming the fat with both time and money.

Additionally, keeping a consistent record of previous projects will help you with the planning stage as well as throughout the project. Having access to a detailed look at the strengths and weaknesses—or past failures and successes—of your team will help you get the most out of your workforce. So remember to keep detailed records as you work so that you can reach even greater allocation efficiency in future.

Using Tools to Allocate Resources: Let Journyx Help

Effective resource management in project management, like nearly anything else, requires having the right tools in front of you. Making sure that you can track tasks, who completes them, and how long they take will give you a detailed roadmap for what to expect in a project, which gives you a clear picture of how best to utilize the resources at your disposal. Software like Journyx PX offers a fully customizable approach to tracking every step of your projects, providing you with valuable data without taking up extra time.

When you use our time tracking software, you’ll quickly get to know your team and your tasks in a way that feels second nature, so that scheduling, assigning tasks, and budgeting become strengths that set you apart from the competition and make sure you’re getting the most out of your resources. Request a demo today to see what you’ve been missing.