We have seen numerous clients who treat resourcing as a necessary evil. But, dear friends, don't treat it that way! Take it seriously. Resourcing is one of the cornerstones of project business – it is actually the be-all and end-all.
Resourcing is not the same as that one Excel somewhere in the depths of folders. Project managers click around in it from time to time to see who is doing what on which project. The Excel sheet may sometimes be up to date – or it may not. Someone might read it now and then – or they might not. Resourcing is, however, so much more than just recording allocated hours.
Effective resourcing is paying attention to people
What if a resourcing tool could also take care of employees' well-being? In Silverbucket an employee's total workload is visible in real time at all times – both to the manager and to the employee themselves. When a person can clearly see their own workload, it gives them peace of mind. Effective resourcing is also about recovery. A resourcing tool shows when an employee is on vacation or has other long absences.
Workload shows on the one hand an hourly situation, but also whether there are too many projects running at the same time. Is the expert's time spent just switching from project to project, unable to orient or concentrate properly? With a functioning resourcing tool, the organization takes care of its experts so that the workload does not become too large from any perspective.
Effective resourcing is understanding skills
From a sales perspective, effective resourcing is also extremely important – in a project organization salespeople sell future resourcing – skills. Therefore it is important for salespeople to understand what kind of skills are available, what are not available, and what skills exist overall. Problems arise for the company if salespeople sell something that does not exist or is not available.
When salespeople are well involved in resourcing, the company can accurately assess whether certain skills will be sufficient. If they won't be, the company can respond to the future with recruitments. A resourcing tool also clearly shows trends about which types of projects sell particularly well. In such cases it is a good idea to recruit or train more of that skill.
Not only does Silverbucket show experts' skills, but it is also possible to record their development wishes there. This allows suitable tasks and projects to be assigned to staff so that they can learn more about the subject they wish to develop. For example, if a certain expert speaks English at level 2 but would like to reach level 4, they can be assigned to a project that matches their development wishes.
What a resource for a company it is if its staff's desire to develop skills is clearly visible when doing resourcing! This possibility is not present in many other resourcing tools.
Effective resourcing also looks back
In a good resourcing tool, time entries can be linked to resourcing. What has actually been done and what hours have been realized? In this way one can even look backwards and obtain extremely important data. Are we repeatedly estimating certain types of projects 20% too small? This is an eye-opening way to start planning your business better.
In addition, some organizations have noticed that they have a lot more miscellaneous work outside of project operations than was thought. When time entries are reviewed afterwards, experts' efforts can be allocated more realistically to billable projects. On the other hand, you can also consider why, for example, 30% of an expert's working time goes to miscellaneous work. It's not worth fighting the truth; instead, time entries should be learned from.
Effective resourcing reveals the company's pain points
We resourcing professionals at Silverbucket are sometimes worried that some regard the tool as the all-deciding philosopher's stone. It is not that. The tool's job is to help organizations discuss difficult issues related to resourcing. No tool alone runs resourcing – nor is that the intention.
Fiddling with Excels has nothing to do with competence or communication – or forecasting needs. Effective resourcing is not a support function that's just something to be knocked off the list. Resourcing is the core of the entire business. It answers what we must be able to do. Who can do it? Do we have enough time? Do we have enough expertise? The organization must be able to solve problems through resourcing. If problems have been swept under the rug, a tool is needed that brings the pain points out realistically. At Silverbucket we aim to meet this need.