Top Factors that may Impact Resource Capacity Planning in 2022

What is the first step when your organization gets a new project? Of course, proper planning and most importantly, ensure that you have the right resources and enough number of people to complete the project on time. Before setting out on a path to expanding your business, you need to do thorough resource capacity planning in 2022 so that managing multiple projects doesn’t overburden your employees. Thus, it is imperative to consider the overall capacity and resources at hand before taking on additional responsibility. Thinking of these factors while you are in the planning stage will help you seamlessly overcome any obstacles that you may encounter. To tackle any such issues to optimally utilize your team’s effort and talent, it’s best to implement capacity planning and management software. But before proceeding further, let’s look at what is resource capacity planning.

What is Resource Capacity Planning?

To make sure that you are able to deliver your projects in a timely and successful manner, it is important to gauge and plan your resource capacity ahead of time. Resource capacity planning is the process where a project or resource manager determines the number of resources needed to meet the project requirements. In simpler words, it’s about predicting the variance between available resources and what is the needed number. Calculating this helps in informed decision-making, that is, if you would need more people to complete the ongoing and upcoming projects, or should you postpone some new projects. Read on to find some more benefits of resource capacity planning in 2022.

Main Advantages of Resource Capacity Planning 

1. Optimal resource utilization
2. Reducing resource costs
3. Minimizing the hazards of over-booking 
4. Easy access to data in real-time 
5. Keep the competencies and interests of your team in mind
6. Enables efficient time management by the team members
7. Efficient management of production cycles 
8. Positive impact on the company’s long-term plans
9. Decisions to open or not open new offices or locations

Top 5 Factors that Impact Capacity Planning and Management

1. Shortage of skilled resources

Imagine doing capacity planning and management if you are facing a shortage of resources. It gets more complex if you have lesser available resources. Also, with the global pandemic and recessions throughout the world, there has been a shortage of skilled resources in the market. Now, imagine how capacity planning and management suffer because of the huge gap between resource demand and actual resource availability. As there is low resource availability, project managers may have no option but over-book their team members with additional work. This has its own hazards as overburdening people leads to fast burnout, frustration, and attrition. This further leads to bad quality of project execution, delays, and even less revenue for the organization.

2. Huge demand for learning and upskilling opportunities

These days, most employees globally are demanding skill enhancement, training, and development to hone their competencies. A recent study proves that almost 65% of the surveyed people rated the ability to upskill as important when assessing various job options. About 50% of employees stated that they are willing to join a different company if they got ample learning and development opportunities there. Particularly, most of the millennial workforce these days are inclined towards jobs that offer on-the-job training, skill enhancement, and mentoring activities. This helps to improve their overall job satisfaction and retention rate. 

3. Varying work schedules and locations

After the global pandemic, remote work and distributed teams have become the norm. But from the perspective of project managers, it’s tough to manage people based and working out of various locations and in different time zones. Juggling with people in different locations can make resource capacity planning in 2022 quite tough. They also need to keep a tab on resource availability, their interests, etc. when they are doing project planning and scheduling. A solution to this is implementing the right capacity planning software. 

4. Employees’ competencies and project requirements do not match

In any project, a team needs to manage a variety of tasks. Thus, project managers try to do their resource capacity planning as per the competencies or skill sets required. For example, if the project involves creating an e-learning program, instructional designers, graphic designers, programmers, project managers, and account managers. The ideal way is to match the required skill set and only then hire the requisite number of people. If you do hire the required number of people, but compromise on the skill set or hire people with some other competency but not what was needed, then the project will suffer eventually. Now, the next step is to figure out if full-time employees are needed, if the remote working mode is possible, or if freelancers can work. Therefore, the skill set is very important to consider while calculating skills or hiring gaps or surpluses while doing resource capacity planning and making optimal resourcing decisions.

5. Agile ways of working 

Though the Agile approach is not new, the pandemic’s volatile effect on global businesses has impelled more project managers to implement this flexible, iterative strategy across various projects. Though still uncertain economic conditions continue, organizations throughout want to continue leveraging the Agile method and ways of working to be able to “adapt in a structured way.” Having said that, constantly shifting sprints could make the usual resource capacity planning even more complex. Wondering why? Because you will have to estimate capacity for tasks instead of every single project. That is not a wise approach as it involves a lot of hassles and is also prone to errors.

Ace Your Resource Capacity Planning and Management with a Resource Capacity Planning Tool

Now you know how difficult it can be to manage capacity planning and management manually. For instance, assessing the data on each team member’s skill set, especially when working in a remote mode, is very tough. Also, collating information on employees’ days off, planned leave, or sick leaves from your HR is also quite cumbersome. This is why implementing a resource capacity planning tool is the best solution to ease the capacity planning and management process. Such a tool also simplifies many processes such as project and resource planning, resource management, creating visual dashboards, analytics, product management, and a lot more. 

eResource Scheduler is Your Best Bet to Manage Resource Capacity Planning with Ease

Resource capacity planning and optimization are imperative in executing any successful project or business. With an AI-enabled, cloud-based software such as eResource Scheduler, you can easily have access to all data and information about the projects running in the organization, all your resources, etc. on one, online platform. Thus, it acts as a repository of all your data that can be accessed from anywhere in the world and at any time. What’s more? You can also do resource capacity planning in some simple steps and track the progress and status of your projects on the go. You can also ensure that your capacity is not above the optimal resource utilization percentage. Implementing Enbraun’s eResource Scheduler enables you to calculate your team’s overall capacity, productivity, utilization, etc. automatically and in real-time. This capacity planning and management software also helps in reducing your bench time and improving the organization’s revenue. Have some questions on top of your mind? Book your free trial and check out eResource Scheduler’s benefits in efficient capacity planning and management.