Skill-Based Resource Management is Essential for Better Delivery
Many resource management tools today focus on assigning people to tasks based on their job titles or roles, such as a "Senior Database Developer" or "Back-End Systems Engineer". This approach is common, especially in project management systems where the focus is on task management and roles are considered 'best fit' matches to tasks, but it often leads to mismatches between the person’s actual skills and the specific needs of the task. Assigning resources based solely on their role or profession can create inefficiencies, delays, and issues with project delivery and we designed EmployPlan to directly address this problem by working at the discrete skill and experience level.
For example, if you need someone to handle front-end development for a project that requires AngularJS expertise, a "Senior Front-End Engineer" might seem like the right choice when planning the project. However, one developer in that role might have years of experience with AngularJS but little to no experience with NGRX for state detection with Angular, which may be the require toolset for this project. In this case, assigning them based on their role alone leads to a skill gap, slowing down progress and possibly impacting the quality of the work. This highlights the problems with managing resources solely by role instead of considering the specific skills required for each project.
This often means that project managers and senior management have a view of the depth and capabilities of their bench that aren't really accurate to the reality - in some cases, they are missing out of skills they have but aren't putting to work or selling projects that have a high learning curve cost. The only way to really understand this forest of talent is to build a system that can track every leaf in the forest - tracking every skill and every delivery experience at a time and test level.
How Skill-Based Assignments Improve Resource Management
EmployPlan changes this by tracking skills at a granular level and measuring both the recency and depth of training, but more critically, we look at the time experience using that specific toolset in their project work. Instead of just looking at someone's job title, our approach provides a detailed view of their exact skill set and experience and we track project needs at this level of granular detail, which enables project managers to match roles with the right person, based on the skills they actually possess, not just the role they’re assigned to.
By focusing on skill tracking during the assignment process, EmployPlan provides an accurate, up-to-date picture of each team member’s capabilities. This ensures that project managers can assign people to tasks that align closely with their skills, improving project outcomes and reducing the risk of mismatched assignments.
The Impact of Role-Based Assignments
When resources are assigned based on their job title alone, it can lead to several problems:
- Skill Mismatch: Assigning someone to a project based on their general role, such as "front-end developer" or "database administrator," can result in them being placed in a role that requires skills they don’t have.
- Delays and Retraining: If a team member doesn’t have the right skills for the task, additional time may be needed for training, or a resource swap may be required, leading to project delays.
- Lower Productivity: Working on tasks without the necessary skills can lead to longer task completion times and can reduce the overall quality of the project’s deliverables.
- Lower Employee Confidence and Satisfaction: Working at a task you are poorly trained or experienced in is a frustrating moment on two levels - worrying about failing the customer as well as feeling as if their manager doesn't really know their abilities or career goals.
These issues are common in project management systems that don’t focus on detailed skill tracking. By assigning resources based only on their role or title, project managers run the risk of making assignments that don’t align with the real needs of the project.
The Benefits of Skill-Based Resource Management
- More Accurate Project Assignments: Skill-based tracking allows project managers to assign the right person to the right task. EmployPlan’s system ensures that if a task requires React expertise, the person with the relevant experience is assigned, not just any "front-end engineer.
- Better Project Delivery: By avoiding mismatches in skill assignments, the overall flow of the project is smoother, with fewer delays and fewer needs for retraining or reassigning staff.
- Continual Skill Monitoring: EmployPlan integrates with your existing task and timecard systems, tracking how skills are applied and developed over time. This ensures that skill tracking remains up-to-date, making future resource assignments even more accurate.
- Better Employee Satisfaction: By assigning work that people are well equipped to do or assigning detailed training and mentorship to close the specific skill gap, employees feel more supported and aligned with their management.
- Discovering Missing Opportunities: It's no secret that we are creatures of habits and one of those habits is assuming the skills you have seen are the only skills present in your staff. With discrete skill tracking, we can uncover hidden skills that you might not be using effectively in your work.
State of the platform and the roadmap ahead:
What we have built in the latest release is a leap forward in tracking discrete skills - moving beyond title and into details on trainings, learning events, delivery work and project assignments, all rooted with a view at the discrete tool and platform level. We currently have detailed tracking on project experiences to track how much time a person has had with a given technology as well as a robust tracking system for every learning event - every course, naturally, but also every book, seminar or event they attend on the subject. But what is next in the roadmap?
Up next is a more robust experience around learning management (October release) and a system to automating the testing of discrete skills quickly and seamlessly - want to verify that this Python engineer can actually do work with NumPy arrays and Pytorch? We will be able to spin up a spot test on the skill to show actual coding skills as a verfication of skill step, built into the platform (November release). This will become super important as we turn on our alliance features, so you can verify skills from resources coming from partner benches in the Dec/January release.
Details matter in Execution Excellence
Relying on roles and titles for resource assignments in project management can lead to skill mismatches, delays, and lower productivity. EmployPlan’s approach of tracking individual skills offers a clearer, more precise method for assigning tasks based on real expertise. This approach improves project outcomes by ensuring that the most relevant person is always assigned to the task, reducing the likelihood of retraining or resource swapping and ultimately leading to more efficient project delivery. By integrating skill tracking directly into the project assignment process, EmployPlan helps teams avoid common pitfalls and achieve better results.
