Project management resource

It is not necessary to be a professional in project management to agree that correct allocation, accurate control and smart administering over the given project resources (including HR, equipment and finances) are extremely important for project’s success and efficiency. For this purpose rational and optimized plan should be composed and translated into practical actions. This plan includes a schedule that outlines how resources will be applied in terms of time to achieve their balanced loading. Usually resources are very limited, and project managers face a situation when PM resources should be shared among several concurrently running tasks, or in other words several tasks are assigned to one resource (usually a unit of manpower or equipment) during the same time, so all tasks cannot be performed with the same efficiency and speed, thus some of them will stay pending until the resource gets free from previous task .

In this situation, the manager has to deal with constraints referring to conception of resource loading – the amount of ongoing workloads assigned to one resource, and its ability to process these assignments. There is a set of methods to overcome these issues, called project management resource levelling that is a process of plan reorganization towards eliminating the excessive project management resource loading (this may mean revising schedule to meet availability). PM resource levelling allows project managers to balance resources over the course of a project and try to resolve conflicts between resources. In order to facilitate efforts of the manager on scheduling, special software can be used.

• Scheduling – this is a process when tasks are appointed to appropriate resources to be performed within certain time periods with definite start and finish dates. Software for project management resource scheduling should feature adjustable Calendar for task planning, and possibility to communicate this schedule to work performers (Calendar sharing).
• Tracking – in the course of resource utilization it appears necessary to control how this process is going on to ensure that everything is ok. Job tracking is one of the key functions for special software allowing you to control how resources are utilized and task performed.

VIP Task Manager is a client-server program that promotes real-time communications between team participants. It features three plan templates (Task List, Task Tree and Calendar) . This product works as an interactive matrix interconnecting multiple users and making life of project manager easier by providing him/her with effective means for tracking and planning. With a help of this product you are free to plan, assign and control tasks within your workgroup. This tool enables controlling utilization through focusing on the tasks at hand without ever losing sight of the big picture – you can adjust this product right to your needs, including planning and controlling costs, time, productivity, efficiency and many other quantitative parameters used in your projects.