Sources of Expert Judgment in Resource Planning

Who did you look to for advice when you were younger? Was it a parent? A relative? A teacher? Chances are you sought out someone who you felt had been through your situation before. Having lived through the situation made that person an expert on the subject.

In project management, you may find you need help in the form of expert judgment. There are various sources of expert judgment for the resource planning needs of your project. Where you go depends on what kind of information you need.

The primary sources of expert judgment in resource planning are:

• other units within the performing organization
  The first place to look for help with your resource planning needs is within other units of your company. Different departments have specialized knowledge, and they can provide you with their resource pool descriptions, work breakdown structures, and scope statements. And remember, when you use company resources, your company saves money by using skills it already pays for.
  

• consultants
  Consultants are another avenue you can look to for help with your resource planning. Consultants focus their knowledge in one specific field. When that field plays a role in your resource planning, you should seek out the person who knows the information inside and out.
  

• professional and technical associations
  Expert judgment can also be found in professional and technical associations. These associations may offer their members up-to-date industry training or provide information on the latest developments in your field. This could be useful for updating organizational policies and as a source of historical information.
  

• industry groups
  Industry groups are another source of expert judgment for resource planning. Industry groups are involved in setting industry standards and lobbying governments, and can refer you to important sources of information relating to your project.
  
  Industry group lobbying may necessitate changes to your company's organizational policies. It may also require you to upgrade staff or equipment. These actions would affect your resource pool description.
  
  Industry groups can also put you in touch with companies you are interested in doing business with, or that have similar interests. If you need specific materials or equipment, your industry group may be able to tell you who to contact. This would impact your resource pool description. It may also influence your scope statement. As you contact more people in relation to your project, you have a better idea of the possibilities.
  

Knowing where to go for expert judgment and advice means that as soon as you need information for resource planning you know where to get it. This saves time for you and your project team.

Estimating Project Activity Durations

Have you ever worked on a project where a critical resource was not available when you needed it? Has a project activity been shorter or longer than you expected? How do project managers plan resources for these activities?

Activity duration estimates are an important input to project resource planning. Activity duration estimates are quantitative assessments of the likely number of work periods required to complete an activity. The estimates should include the range of possible results. Project managers use activity duration estimates as a basis for scheduling time and resources for a project.

The project manager uses the WBS to determine which activities are involved in completing the project. Then using the tools and techniques of activity duration estimating, he prepares estimates for activity duration.

The estimates include an "optimistic," "most likely," and "pessimistic estimate," listed in that order. For example, activity 1 could take 10 days to complete, will most likely take 12 days, but could take as long as 16 days.

Only the optimistic and pessimistic estimates are used by project managers to create a range of possible results. These results become your activity duration estimates. In the example given earlier, the duration estimate would be two weeks, plus or minus two days, to indicate that the activity will take between 12 and 16 days.

Project managers also calculate the probability of the estimates being correct. For example, a project manager might estimate that there is a 15 percent probability that an activity duration will exceed 3 weeks, and an 85 percent probability that it will be less than 3 weeks.

John, a project manager for Quick-as-a-Wink computer consultants, has determined the activities involved in a software development project. One of those activities is scripting the content. John determines that the scripting activity should take 240 working hours to complete. He will use these hours to calculate his activity duration estimates.

John's activity duration estimates include the duration and the probability of the estimate being correct. John estimates that the scripting activity will take six weeks ± three days. There is a 75 percent probability that the scripting activity will take more than six weeks, and a 25 percent probability that it will take less than six weeks.

Activity duration estimates form the backbone of the project schedule. A properly prepared schedule will lead to better resource planning. And better resource planning will lead to a more successful project.

The Importance of Resource Planning and Acquisition Policies

Organizational policies are the policies of the performing organization regarding staffing and the rental or purchase of supplies and equipment. These policies must be considered during resource planning to ensure that your project will run as smoothly as possible.

Organizational policies are the result of tried and true business practices. Company policies can encompass a wide range of issues from employee benefits to resource acquisition.

Staffing issues are covered by your company's human resource policies. A collective bargaining agreement is a factor that might affect your company's policies. These agreements place restrictions upon employers concerning hours of work, wages, and job security. They can determine overtime, vacation pay, and safety standards. Consider the example of Kurt, a project manager for an appliance manufacturer.

Another example of staffing policies are company hiring policies. These policies may include equal opportunity programs, internal hiring practices, and educational requirements.

Not abiding by these policies can lead to employee dissatisfaction, high employee turnover, and even lawsuits. To avoid these potentially debilitating problems, you will want to commit your organization's staffing policies to memory.

The other policy areas of interest to resource planners are organization's equipment and materials policies. These policies specify how you are to acquire resources from suppliers.

For example, your company may have policies:

• requiring that all suppliers be approved by the Quality Assurance department
• listing preferred suppliers from which you must choose
• regarding each step of the acquisition process.

Other policies may exist to help you decide whether to rent or purchase the necessary materials and equipment. If a project requires equipment or materials for a short period of time, a company may determine it is cheaper to rent rather than purchase the equipment or materials.
Each step of acquiring resources may have an accompanying policy. Make sure you know what your company has determined regarding these resource decisions before you begin. Failure to abide by resource acquisition policies can destroy hard-won relationships with favored long-term suppliers and may result in significant increases in supply costs which could result in project budget overages.

Organizational policies act as a guide to ensure a quality project. They help your project run more smoothly because everyone knows what is expected in terms of resource planning and acquisition. In addition, these policies serve to protect against the negative effects of not abiding by policy, which can include employee lawsuits, damaged relationships with long-term suppliers, and increased project costs.

Planning Resources Using a Resource Pool Description

Before you begin working on a project, you need know if you have the resources to support it. This is where a resource pool description comes in. A resource pool description is a report that gives details about the people, materials, and equipment necessary to complete the project work.

People
To keep track of the human component of your project, you should compile a list of potential human resources. This list should include:

• the person's name
• whether she is an internal or external resource
• her resource type
• her skills
• the company or division she works for
• her supervisor
• her pay rate
• the anticipated project start and end dates
• her availability
• any vacation she may be eligible or already scheduled to take
• additional comments

Your human resource requirements may change as the project progresses and so may not have all the spreadsheet information at project inception, but you should strive to fill in as much information as possible before you begin assigning resources.

Equipment and materials
The information you need for your equipment and materials spreadsheet varies only slightly from your human resource spreadsheet. You would need to know:

• the resource name
• whether the resource is internal or external
• the supplier (source of the resource)
• the rate or cost per unit
• the resource location
• the resource availability
• a contact name
• the resource type
• specifications
• comments

Your resource pool description is not static. The different phases of a project may require different resources. That's why your list of possible resources may change as your project progresses.
You may need a large number of people working on your project to start with. As the project progresses, you may need fewer people, but with highly specialized skills. Or the opposite could happen. This means that you will constantly have to adjust your resource pool description.

Similarly, your project could require completely different equipment or materials, depending on which phase of the project you are working on. Your resource pool description should reflect this.

In addition to keeping track of what resources are "available," you should also keep track of the resources once you use them. This information is needed for accounting purposes and can also be used to estimate future resource requirements for future projects.

Your project plan outlines the type of work your project requires. Your resource pool description allows you to match the right resource to a specific task. As such, a resource pool description is an invaluable tool for the project you are planning now and for those you will plan in the future.

The Components of a Project Scope Statement

Project scope is defined in a document called a scope statement. The scope statement directs and focuses the project and provides a documented basis for making future project decisions. A scope statement promotes efficient decision making and planning by ensuring that stakeholders have a common understanding of the project.

The scope statement combines various components, four of which are essential to resource planning: justification, objectives, product description, and deliverables.

• Justification
  The first component of the scope statement necessary to resource planning is the project justification. Project justification is the need that the project was undertaken to address.
  
  The project justification also provides the basis for evaluating trade-offs. Trade-offs are made between the cost of a project and the benefit of completing it. Unforeseen future issues may have a negative effect on this cost-benefit analysis, and new decisions will have to be made.
  

• Objectives
  Project objectives are the second component of a scope statement. To be of value, project objectives must be quantifiable, that is, they should have a numerical value associated with them (dates, percentages, financial figures, etc). This will enable you to determine when those objectives have been met.
  
  At the very least, your project scope statement should include measurable cost, schedule, and quality objectives.
  

• Product description
  Another component of the scope statement necessary to resource planning is a description of product of the project.
  
  The scope statement should include a summary of the product description that includes the features of the product or service and the relationship between the product or service and the need that gave rise to it.
  

• Deliverables
  The last component of the project scope necessary to resource planning are the deliverables. The deliverables are subproducts whose delivery marks the completion of the project. The subproducts are important because they must be completed fully and to the client's satisfaction before the project is considered finished.
  

Every project needs a scope statement which includes the project justification, objectives, product description, and deliverables. Furthermore, every stakeholder should have a copy of this important document to ensure that everyone involved in the project has a common understanding of the project's scope. This common point of reference is essential as the project progresses and the scope is revised and updated.

The Sources and Uses of Project Historical Data

There is an old adage that history repeats itself. The negative connotation to this is that humans tend to make the same mistakes over and over again. Despite this tendency, people can learn from studying history.

Like world history, historical information from past projects provides you with the opportunity to benefit from past successes while avoiding past failures.

Past projects provide you with inputs for your current project, telling you what people, equipment, and materials were needed for which tasks. Project historical data also tells you which practices and procedures were effective and which were not.

Analyzing project historical data is made easier when you keep a project notebook. A project notebook holds data records in the form of various reports. These reports include:

• project plans
• status reports
• budget reports
• resource and supplier QA and performance reports
• project logs (issues and problems).

Previous project plans can give you ideas for how you can approach your project. You can see how tasks were accomplished, what methods were deployed, and what type of resources were used.
Status reports indicate how well the resources that were used functioned while budget reports provide information about the cost of potential suppliers and contractors, which can help you estimate the cost of future projects.

Quality assurance reports give information on the quality level of the resources used on a project. The same type of information regarding suppliers is found in supplier performance reports.

Project logs reveal past issues and problems. You can apply these "lessons learned" to your current project.

Consider the example of an international telecommunications project. A similar project estimated the timelines for various stages of a project in its project plans. The actual timelines were recorded in the status reports. Reasons for the discrepancy between the two were recorded in the project logs. The budget report stated the costs, and an analysis of the project flow was included in the resource and supplier performance reports.

The paper trail left from previous projects helps you estimate costs, choose suppliers, estimate timelines, and see different approaches to a project. As such, it is your guidepost to the success of your current project.

The Components of the Work Breakdown Structure

Did you ever have so much to do that it was difficult to know where to start? What strategies did you use to complete your work? Did you break things down into manageable components?

A work breakdown structure (WBS) breaks down a project into manageable components. It is a chart that outlines project phases and organizes and define the scope of the project.

A WBS breaks down your project so that it is easy to identify the resources you need to complete each phase and task. When combined, these resources form a project resource list.

A WBS has several components. A code of accounts is one component of the WBS. It is a numerical identifier that is assigned to each item in the WBS. This identifier indicates to which level of the WBS hierarchy the task belongs. This identifier is also a quick indicator of which WBS level you are currently working on. It also makes it possible for you to see how your task is linked to others at each level. Looking at these other levels may help you understand how your task fits into the big picture.

Work packages are another component of a WBS. Work packages are the lowest-level items and show the division of project labor into workable units. Each unit can then be given to an individual or group to accomplish.

How do you know what degree of detail you need for the work package level of a WBS? A general guide is to make each work package small enough so that you can use it as a separate work element for estimating purposes. All of the work packages should have a consistent level of detail and control. If the level of detail varies between work packages, your plan will be distorted and confusing. If your work package needs further detail, it can be sub-divided into a list of work activities or tasks.

The WBS contains a great deal of information within its simple chart form. There is another element of the WBS that helps explain all of this information. This element is called a WBS dictionary, and it explains the nature of the work done in each of the WBS items. A WBS dictionary is a document that includes information concerning each phase and sub-phase of the WBS.

Information concerning the phases and sub-phases of a project can include planning information such as, schedule dates, cost budgets, and staff assignments.

The WBS dictionary is most often used on large projects and is compiled by team members after the WBS hierarchy has been determined. Planning teams can then refer to it when they are developing their detailed plans. This ensures that they are organizing their work into the WBS hierarchy correctly.

MercuryRising is an IT company with many series of ongoing projects. Lisa is a project manager handling approximately five series of Internet courses for a total of 42 courses. She must ensure that these courses are completed on time and within budget. To do this, she uses a WBS dictionary. Lisa needs a WBS dictionary so she can quickly see who is assigned to which course, the final date each is due to the client, and how much each course is costing her in resources.

A sample of what she might find in her WBS dictionary is:

Course: Interview Skills
Writer: Jane Scott
Course deadline: June 16
Project Cost: $3,000

The Work Breakdown Structure—with its code of accounts, work packages, and dictionary—is an important tool for breaking down and tracking the progress of your project. Once you finish each work package, you can move up the WBS hierarchy until the project is completed. This helps you plan the resources you need and monitor their use throughout your project.