Agile resource management describes an approach that focuses on distribution and managing resources within an agile project or organization. This typically includes resource utilization which aligns with the project's needs and changes as the project progresses. Managing people is a crucial aspect of project resource management. Project resource management in agile practices primarily involves making use of the human and physical resources that are involved within a project. Human resource management consists of a multitude of stakeholders, with a few being customers/clients, project team members, staff, suppliers supporting the project, and etc. Project resource management consists of six main processes:
PLANNING RESOURCE MANAGEMENT- involves determining how a project's resources will be employed, what resources are necessary to complete the project, and how many of these resources are required for each project. To simplify things, this process creates a rough outline of how the resources will be managed throughout the project duration.
ESTIMATING ACTIVITY RESOURCES- involves focusing on the amount of resources necessary to complete a project. This process estimates the kind of people, equipment, and materials necessary to complete each sprint or cycle of each project.
ACQUIRING RESOURCES- focuses primarily on how to obtain the necessary resources, equipment, and materials in order to ensure that a project has access to these crucial elements in order to improve overall performance and team effectiveness.
DEVELOPING THE PROJECT TEAM- this process involves enhancing the interactions and skills the team members have in order to improve project performance. In addition to this by enriching the team interactions, it can foster a more collaborative and supportive work environment in order to work effectively and efficiently on the team's objective.
MANAGING THE PROJECT TEAM- this process involves overseeing and managing the project team in order to ensure that teammates are working effectively and efficiently on the projects end goals. Typically project managers play this role and they provide guidance on resolving conflicts, whether they be personal or professional conflicts and motivating team members in order to increase productivity.
CONTROLLING RESOURCES- this process involves monitoring and managing project resources in order to ensure that those resources are being maximized. This process implements tracking resource usage, anything that deviated from the original resource plan, and making the adjustments necessary to ensuring the project stays on track with its resource management goals.
WHY IS AGILE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IMPORTANT?
Agile resource management is crucial for maintaining a flexible and adaptable environment. This ensures that the right resources, skilled associates, equipment, and materials are allocated effectively and efficiently in order to meet the demands of the project. Agile resource management promotes a collaborative work environment in order to enable high-quality results within the intended duration of the project. This will ultimately enhance the overall project succession rate and leave customer feelings satisfied and coming back for more.
WHY IS AGILE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IMPORTANT?
In order to get the most out of resource management in agile methodologies, some software can prove to be beneficial in this instance. One of the softwares you can use in order to delegate elements such as equipment, materials, facilities, and people, is a software called Project 2016. By defining and allocating the necessary resources, you are able to keep track of specific tasks and user stories, this software enables the creation and maintenance of tasks, Project 2016 provides good visualization tools, such as Gantt charts and other graphical representations that can make managing data more easy, this software fosters collaboration and communication. In addition to this, it can be used to help provide insights to resource utilization and help project managers identify potential issues, and help track progress in agile projects.
Another agile project resource management software tool is Miro. Miro is an online workspace that allows for the distribution of teams to design and build together. Miro allows you to take advantage of collaboration tools. These tools can help make cross-functional teamwork more effortless in combination with the use of video chats, screen sharing, and many other features. Through interactive agile workflows, diagrams, charts, and visual representations, this platform’s resource management tools align with other project activities. This promises project visibility and efficiency with a strong focus in benefiting remote teams.
CONCLUSION
In this blog, we investigated agile project resource management and how essential it is in planning resource management, estimating activity resources, acquiring resources, developing the project team, managing the project team and controlling resources. These processes help ensure the effective utilization of both the human and physical resources by fostering a friendly, collaborative work environment which will help increase productivity levels amongst project team members and additionally create a healthy and friendly competition amongst each other. Additionally, in this blog we discussed the significance of some software tools such as Project 2016 and Miro within agile methodologies. These resource management tools contain features which are proven to aid in resource allocation, visual, collaboration, and data analysis, which ultimately improves the project efficiency. These insights, tools, and organizations can help all the stakeholders whether that be, customers/clients, project team members, staff, suppliers supporting the project, and etc, can prove to improve productivity and successful project outcomes.
Citations:
https://www.innovationtraining.org/what-is-miro-and-how-to-use-miro-for-collaboration/
https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/tools/agile-project-management-software/