Monday, February 4, 2008

Documents Used to Plan Project Resources

When planning your projects, have you ever wondered whether you have enough resources for the project or whether the resources assigned to the project are able to perform the tasks in the allotted time?

The resource requirements and resource pool descriptions are valuable inputs to schedule development. Together, they will help you determine the resources needed to successfully complete your project.

Resource requirements detail the human and material resource required to complete a given project. In assigning resources to a project, you will want to consider that the duration of most activities will be significantly influenced by the resources assigned to them. For example, three people are required to work on Task 2, from week 6 to week 13. If two are working part-time and the other full-time, the full-time employee will finish twice as fast as the part-time employees.

Project managers use a process called resource planning to determine what physical resources, and what quantities of each, are needed to complete a project's activities. Physical resources include people, equipment, and materials.

When developing a project schedule, you need to know what resources are potentially available. A resource pool description is a list of the resources that will be available, times that they are available, and in what quantities. The amount of detail may vary depending on the project.

Resource requirements and resource pool descriptions go hand in hand for project schedule development. The resource requirements determine what type of resources are needed. Whereas, the resource pool description determines what type of resources are available.

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