DİPLOMATİK YAZIŞMA VE PROTOKOL - Deneme Sınavı - 2

Even though it has several advantages, resource allocation has several challenges that a project manager must be aware of. In their website, Paweł Hałabuda summarizes these challenges as follows:
• Client Changes: Any changes in the scope, the due date, or the budget can easily affect the current resource allocations. Hence, a good project manager must always be ready to adjust the resources with respect to the possible changes.
• Availability of Resources: Having multiple projects that share the same resources, broken machines, or sick workers force a project manager to monitor the resources all the time since the availability of resources can suddenly change.
• Activity Predecessors: A project manager must pay great attention to the activity predecessors while allocating the resources. In most cases, there exist some activities in the project which cannot be started before some other activities are completed. In such cases, the resources to be used in these activities do not need to be prepared in advance.
• Changes in Priorities: Changes in the priorities among the projects is a common problem for a company if multiple projects run at the same time. In this situation, the resources, which a project manager has already allocated, may be needed by the other project that has a high priority for the company.

The third step of resource management is resource aggregation. In this step, we sum the resources that are required to complete all the activities with respect to the resource allocation step outputs. Histograms are very practical to show the results of that aggregation process.

At that point, a project management software, which will be explained in detail in the following part, can help the project manager a lot.
Top-five tips for resource forecasting in project management are as follows:
• Skills needed for the project must be thoroughly understood.
• Strengths and weaknesses of the project team members must be clarified.
• Investigate the recent projects to determine the usage (over or underutilized) of the resources and use these data to predict the future resource requirements.
• Assign the right resources to the right activity in the project plan.
• Statistics about the resources such as employee turnover rate, recruitment trends, and return on investment must be kept under control.

The resource histogram is a bar chart that illustrates the number of required resources for a project throughout the project life cycle. Depending on the preference of the project manager, bars can also show the amount of time that a specific resource is scheduled.

A good staffing management plan consists of an introduction, staffing requirements, staff assignments, and training, rewards and reassignment parts; and it may include the following information

In order to evaluate resource management software, the following criteria can be used.

As already mentioned above, the resource management aims to maximize the value resulting from the company’s limited resources throughout the entire project for all departments and teams. In their websites, Hansen (2018) and Rius (2019) summarize the benefits of successful resource management for a company as follows:

• Avoids unexpected delays: By developing resource management plans, necessary resources can be predicted, and the unexpected delays may be avoided.
• Prevents overloads and fatigue: Effective resource management allows us to prevent overloads of resources (fatigue for humans) and bottlenecks or roadblocks by using resource allocation, aggregation, and leveling techniques.
• Builds transparency: Resource management provides transparent information about the status and workloads of resources and builds transparency for all the shareholders of the project.
• Measures efficiency: It allows us to measure the efficiency of resources and enable us to work on a 6multi-project environment. It also helps us to calculate the return on investment (ROI) ratio easily. 
• Provides a safety net and projection: Resource management lets us know that we did the best with the available resources in hand and it offers the future projection for the upcoming projects.

According to Bpayne and Adrienne Watt (2014), there are five techniques and tools to estimate the resources for each activity in the project schedule.

The resource allocation is the second step of the resource management. In this step, resources, which
are defined in the first step, are assigned to the specific activities in the project schedule. At that step, we
also determine the required number resources. 

The third step of resource management is the resource aggregation. In this step, we sum the resources
that are required to complete all the activities with respect to the resource allocation step outputs.

In resource leveling, the aim is to solve the resource conflicts by shifting (mostly delaying) the dates of the tasks. By doing so, we try to get a smoother distribution of resource allocation. To identify the resource conflicts, we examine the network diagram in terms of slacks and floats, and determine the tasks that can be delayed to overcome the overallocation.

In a projectized organization, team members are collocated and the project managers are on the top of their hierarchy. The project manager has all the resources to complete the project, and the team members are directly connected to the project manager.

Even though there are different models to describe the responsibilities, RACI model is the most widely used model in the literature, which is derived from the key responsibilities: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed, .

A good staffing management plan consists of introduction, staffing requirements, staff assignments, and training, rewards and reassignment parts.

Not being compatible with the software used in the company is an integration problem whereas not allowing them to predict the upcoming resource requirements of the company is a problem regarding forecasting.

The human resources management consists of four main parts: organization chart for the project, responsibility assignment matrix, histogram for resources, and staffing management plan.

Resource management is the pre-planning, scheduling and resource allocation method
for maximizing the effectiveness. Resource management needs a thorough knowledge of your goals and ability, and it needs transparency. By setting up a healthy resource management process, you can maximize effectiveness and monitor the use of those resources easily. The answer is B.

Money, material, machine and manpower are the Four M’s, which is a common framework for defining the resources available for a project. The answer is E.

There are 4 steps of successful resource management process. First, we start with determining the necessary sources for our project. In the second step, we classify them with respect to the given classes above such as consumable, secondary resources, etc. In the third step, according to the project scheduling, we must estimate the required quantity of each source determined in the previous step for all the activities. Finally, resource aggregation, leveling, and smoothing techniques can be applied, if necessary. The answer is C.

The resource management aims to maximize the value resulting from the company’s limited resources throughout the entire project for all departments and teams. In their websites, Hansen and Rius summarize the benefits of successful resource management for a company as follows: 

• Avoids unexpected delays: By developing resource management plans, necessary resources can be predicted, and the unexpected delays may be avoided. 

• Prevents overloads and fatigue: Effective resource management allows us to prevent overloads of resources (fatigue for humans) and bottlenecks or roadblocks by using resource allocation, aggregation and leveling techniques. 

• Builds transparency: Resource management provides transparent information about the status and workloads of resources and builds transparency for all the shareholders of the project. 

• Measures efficiency: It allows us to measure the efficiency of resources and enable us to work on multi-project environment. It also helps us to calculate return on investment (ROI) ratio easily. 

• Provides a safety net and projection: Resource management lets us know that we did the best with the available resources in hand and it offers the future projection for the upcoming projects. 

The answer is D.

It is essential to have a good resource management system to complete a project on time and on the limited budget. Even though we have enough resources, without an appropriate resource management system, it is not very likely to succeed in a project. Six suggestions for resource management are explored. According to Leankor and Bailey; in order to get optimal performance from the resources, schedule the most valuable resources (i.e. key resources) which are the most critical and problematic resources first. This will also help you organize other resources easier. The answer is A.