The markets can easily turn volatile.
A severe global recession is looming, according to CNBC. Companies are fighting cut-throat competition. Resource costs are rising for every business. Thanks to all these economic uncertainties, you might be looking to optimize resource capacity and make it efficient.
Resource capacity planning bridges the gap between future demand and capacity by tracking the shortage or excess resources. It protects your business through corrective action and better resource utilization.
Are you looking for a practical resource capacity planning tool? EmployPlan is designed to track resource demand and streamline its allocation. Using our comprehensive tools, you can manage capacity planning and track who is working on which project to maximize your true potential.
Let’s dive deeper into resource capacity and how to plan for 2023.
Why is resource capacity planning important?
Resource capacity planning is necessary to align your business with the demands of the immediate and long-term future. It plays a vital role in matching your team members to projects, tracking their billable hours, reviewing impending projects, and streamlining the pipeline.
Resource capacity planning helps reduce billable hours and hire full-time or contractual resources per your business’s needs.
Resource capacity planning in project management
Project management and resource management depends upon resource capacity planning as it streamlines sales and delivery processes.
Moreover, it helps in forecasting opportunities as well. A project manager could easily estimate resource requirements and initiate the requisition process with the help of resource capacity planning.
Effective resource capacity planning helps project managers for foreseeing shortages or excess demands before time. It saves excess hiring or firing costs for them. A project manager can use tools like EmployPlan to set up a capacity planning process. It reduces bench time and optimizes timelines.
To summarize, resource planning improves your team alignment, cuts costs, and secures your business from financial threats and market uncertainties.
What is the difference between capacity and capability?
Simply put, capacity is the maximum that can be produced, stored, or handled. In contrast, capability refers to the ability or capability of a person, organization, or system to do something. Often, capacity describes resources and production, while capability is all about skills and abilities. For example, a factory has a production capacity of 10,000 units per month, while an employee might have the capability to operate a specific machine or software.
Resource management software like EmployPlan supports you in executing capacity planning strategies based on the capacity and capability of resources.
How do you calculate resource capacity?
As a business owner or a resource manager, you need to calculate resource capacity for future projects to provide complete visibility. You may use this capacity planning strategy to calculate it:
- First, multiply the workdays for the project in a month or a week by eight. This will give you the total work hours for the project.
- Now, subtract the time assigned to meetings to find the net-work hours.
- To find out individual capacity, subtract the time off of each member from the net-work hours. Then, multiply the value by the availability.
- Lastly, add up all the individual capacities to find the total hours of resource allocation.
What are the best practices for resource capacity planning?
With a resource capacity planning process, project management turns efficient and effective. Capacity and resource planning makes business conducive for markets. Hence, project managers must follow these best practices for capacity planning and resource planning:
Start tracking time and level of effort
Keep a tab on time and the endeavors of your team members to deliver projects on time and identify roadblocks.
It is crucial for optimizing workflows, resource management, and managing multiple projects. By doing so, you can also streamline resource requisition, predict resource shortages resource conflicts and match the right skills with the right resources.
Identify bottlenecks
You must understand the overall resource demand through resource planning and foresee upcoming projects’ challenges.
It could require additional resources, working in a multi-project environment, gauging future workflow demands, or effectively allocating resources. In a nutshell, you must understand future business requirements to lead a strategy that tracks potential project challenges.
Leave room for L&D
L&D stands for “Learning and Development” which refers to acquiring new skills, knowledge and abilities to improve performance. It can include training programs, on-the-job learning, mentoring and self-study. It is often used in the context of employee development in an organization.
L&D is crucial for good capacity management and needs to be done with a keen eye for details.
And tools like EmployPlan, which collect insights and accurate data for your workforce capacity, administrative tasks, market trends, employee availability, project delays, past projects, and more, are the perfect solution for your L&D initiatives.
Calculate the true availability for work
Resources managers must actively track the actual work and available resources to stay on top of their business.
It helps create a solid project resource plan and informs whether there are sufficient resources for a new project. Hence, always measure it to curb project delays and complete tasks per the timelines.
Prioritise projects to allocate resources
A good resource management tool must help you estimate resource demand and project pipeline.
It should help you manage the project pipeline efficiently. Resource managers must make sure that resource allocation matches the urgency of projects. Implement the right resource plan to deliver a future-proof project and identify if extra resources are needed. This helps with project delays and sets up a clear priority for projects.
The Best Solution for Efficient Resource Capacity Planning
As resource planning is essential for growing any business today, it is crucial to implement it using resource management software created beyond legacy systems. While choosing a solution for streamlining your resource capacity planning, make sure that it provides scalability and ease of use. It should help you predict your project productivity and profitability. Most importantly, it must simplify information for you and allow you to integrate various tools like Slack, Asana, Trello, Zapier, and more used for effective project management.
Final Thoughts
EmployPlan has been regarded as one of the best solutions for comprehensive capacity planning by many business owners across the globe.
It provides a robust system for configuring and scaling your resource capacity and projects. Not to mention how easily it lets you integrate various tools with it. Do try it out for your projects and achieve all your business goals in 2023 through its effective resource capacity planning dashboards.
