Imagine IT teams working on a project halfway through. They are short-staffed, over budget, and need more computing infrastructure. According to recent statistics, 70% of all IT projects fail to succeed.
IT teams are mostly inundated with various tasks, from asset management and meeting organizations’ technological needs to dealing with customer queries. The challenge is to utilize a limited team of professionals and their working hours in the best possible ways to maximize project efficiency. Inefficient resource planning can delay deadlines and disturb project timelines.
Understanding IT resource management is important to ensure every IT project is carefully planned and executed to achieve optimal results. The goal is to train professionals and manage IT resources within the limited financial and time resources available.
To make IT projects successful, let’s dig deeper into IT resource management challenges and their solutions.
IT resource management: Importance and Key processes
IT resource management efficiently manages IT resources like planning, scheduling, and allocating resources for successful project completion.
For example, a non-profit organization requires an IT team to implement a donor management system. The IT team can follow a step-by-step process to ensure IT resources are carefully utilized. Here’s how:
- Planning to procure the best-fit donor management system.
- Allocating the IT team to test the system per the organizations’ standards, import donor information, set up the system, and train donors on how to use it.
- Scheduling interdepartmental meetings to understand system requirements, setting up demos to train employees and donors, and eventually, setting a realistic deadline for project completion.
IT resource management aims to analyze available resources and how well they can be utilized. It ensures IT resources such as assets and devices, management and teams, tools and software, and budgets are adequately distributed to complete projects without delays.
However, interdepartmental conflicts, mismanaged IT assets or other resource inefficiencies can hinder performance and lead to resource conflicts. This is why organizations need IT resource management to:
1. Ensure effective IT asset management
IT asset management processes are implemented from procurement till retirement to ensure these assets are optimally utilized without uninterrupted and unpredictable downtime.
Similarly, limited resources are carefully allocated to minimize over and under-utilization. For example, if a Photoshop application is procured with 50 seats, IT admins must ensure that 50 license seats are entitled to employees.
2. Apply estimation methods to reduce costs
IT managers must forecast the costs and benefits of utilizing IT resources for certain projects. They need to prioritize projects based on managing IT resources cost-effectively to achieve the desired outcomes.
Before IT managers allocate resources, they need to estimate the cost of the proposed project. The IT project cost estimation method evaluates and decides if the project cost is worth spending, considering the business objectives.
The manager analyzes the project scope, required resources, and their availability to calculate the total cost that will be incurred on the project. Different estimation methods can be used to estimate the resource requirement.
For example, T-shirt sizing and the Fibonacci sequence is one of the methods where team members break down their tasks into story points. They place these points on an empty chart with efforts on the X-axis and risks on the Y-axis. In the end, the manager can compile all the points to determine how long a project will take to complete.
This helps IT teams better forecast their capacity and invest in cost-effective projects, saving time and resources for business-worthy projects.
3. Allocate teams as per time availability
Overworked IT teams can make mistakes, feel demotivated, or delay task completion. According to a Harvard Business Review article:
IT managers should try to minimize or restrict specific meeting hours and allocate the rest of the hours for project completion. Tasks can be assigned according to employees’ proficiencies and working hours, resulting in increased productivity and timely completion.
4. Adequate IT resources for business expansion
With ever-evolving market structures, most organizations aim to grow their businesses to acquire a larger market share. IT infrastructure must support this scalability and allocate resources to meet growing operational needs.
5. Align well with strategic goals
All IT resource management processes must closely align with organizational goals to ensure the organization’s overall success and growth.
How to overcome IT resource management roadblocks
1. Ad-hoc projects disrupting timelines
IT teams take on multiple projects at the start of every quarter. They plan and execute these projects based on priority and available resources. However, ad hoc projects between deadlines can disrupt the workflow and impact productivity.
Solution: Prioritize projects and analyze business impact
IT managers should continuously track resource capacity against department workload. If unexpected projects are one-off requests, they can deprioritize less critical tasks. However, if it is a recurring pattern, managers need to hire additional resources to avoid team burnout.
IT teams can deprioritize projects based on their impact on business objectives. For example, implementing security protocols can be prioritized over preparing a cost-effective IT procurement strategy.
This will help release resource capacity, and they can pick urgent projects that require immediate attention.
2. Employee burnout and limited resources
Employee burnout is a physiological condition employees feel when exposed to excessive workloads and extreme workplace stress. According to Forbes article on job burnout and work stress:
Excessive workload in the team is a possible indicator of limited resources. Two to three members handling multiple projects and absorbing unexpected queries can make it difficult to perform, increase work stress, and decrease productivity.
Solution: Implement Workflow management solutions
IT teams can use workflow management solutions to record all their tasks. This helps them provide visibility on current projects, break up tasks within each project, set timelines to complete each task and communicate due dates.
Managers can track employees’ tasks and devise multi-project strategies accordingly. For example, a data migration project may require two days, while another integration project may require three.
Managers can follow a weekly plan where employees are asked to break up their week to accommodate more than one project. Even if the employee meets the deadline, there should be buffer days to accommodate any unexpected delays and testing.
3. Team unavailability and technology obsolete
Common uncertainties can always occur. IT departments are the same because team members can take time off or get sick occasionally.
Additionally, the team may realize during development testing that they require the latest version. The old version is now replaced and obsolete. As a result, the project is delayed because procuring a new version will take additional time.
In addition to these roadblocks, meeting customers’ requirements is not easy. They request major updates requiring extensive time and effort to plan, develop, and test. Meanwhile, multiple test models and iterations are shown to customers, requiring additional time and resources.
Solution: Contingency planning and scope limitation
IT resource planning should include contingency planning. A team should have enough members to fill up resource gaps when needed.
A one-member team is disadvantageous when it comes to occasional leaves. This is why additional or backup resources are necessary to fulfill deadlines in a multi-project environment.
The first step in streamlining project timelines is a clear and realistic strategy. When planning, the team members should clearly state the versions and models required for testing. The project shall be initiated once all models are procured for a smooth development process without delays.
Another aspect of resource planning is the project’s scope. The IT team needs to analyze customer requirements and define the project’s scope. They can then state how many resources are required regarding time, users, and devices.
To reduce back-and-forth, they can highlight only one iteration that will be addressed as part of the current project. After customer approval on the first iteration, the team can make the updates live. Any further changes can be taken up as a new IT project.
4. Time barrier to upskill IT teams
Team members who are overworked on projects can have little or no time to learn new skills or expertise. They must update their skills to align with technological advancements; otherwise, they can become redundant or replaced.
Solution: Devise easy-to-follow learning programs
When time is scarce, IT managers need to adopt strategies that simultaneously manage projects and learning. A small part of daily meetings can include learning new technologies and trends.
For example, each employee can propose a coding problem and mutually work on its solution, resulting in team-based learning and enhanced collaboration.
Additionally, the team can decide on a no-work meeting day and divide that day into project work and learning hours. Fridays are mostly stress-free as members finish weekly tasks and set aside planning and brainstorming sessions for next week.
On this day, teams can allocate the first half to project-related tasks and the other half to learning different programs.
Managers can ensure that the calendars are free of meetings and that ad hoc requests are only catered to at a certain time of the week but not on learning days.
5. Lack of visibility into IT resources
It is difficult for managers to keep track of all resources, their utilization, and project progress. Relying on sheets lacks real-time visibility and can lead to inaccurate decision-making.
Solution: IT resource management software
IT resource management software provides complete visibility into ongoing projects, IT asset utilization, and employees’ task breakups. They can also generate in-depth reports to stay updated on the progress, maintenance, and completion of each IT resource.
Benefits of IT resource management
Implementation of all the above-proposed solutions can lead to effective IT resource management. As a result, the organization can benefit from:
1. Maximum resource utilization
It is crucial to effectively manage IT assets to maximize available capacity at minimal cost.
IT assets are checked for maintenance before being used so that they can perform optimally and reduce downtime. Similarly, human resources are utilized on priority projects and offloaded from other tasks to gain maximum efficiency.
2. Enhanced team collaboration
IT teams provide complete visibility into project tasks and timelines, mitigating miscommunication and conflicts.
All requirements and resource efforts pre-decided in the planning stage help avoid setting up recurring meetings to discuss changes and delaying project timelines.
All departments are up to date and informed about IT resources activities. This helps them collaborate on improving project management and reducing unexpected project requests.
3. Real-time IT resource allocation and planning
IT managers are well-informed about all resource activities in real-time. A dashboard helps them gain insights into allocation and utilization.
Set important metrics, charts, and graphs on the dashboard to quickly identify roadblocks before a resource problem occurs. Low resource capacity is highlighted, and an alert is sent to plan allocation accordingly.
Additionally, calendar dates and times can be linked to the status of IT assets being available, in use, or under maintenance. This can help set relevant project deadlines when resources are up and running to avoid disruptions.
Optimize IT resources for maximum organizational returns
IT resource management is crucial for an organization’s project success. An efficient and skilled IT team can increase productivity. Combined with a robust IT asset tool to maintain and manage assets, this reduces downtime and unexpected delays. Overall, the organization achieves maximum returns by managing IT resources effectively.
