According to recent statistics, almost 70% of all IT projects fail to succeed. This means professional experts utilizing high-quality resources is not the only crucial metric for successful IT projects. Understanding IT resource management is equally important to ensure every IT project step is carefully planned and executed to achieve optimal results.
IT teams are mostly inundated with various tasks, from internal team projects to 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.
The goal of IT resource management is maximum asset utilization by well-trained employees 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.
What is IT resource management?
IT resource management is managing IT resources in the most efficient way. It includes planning, scheduling, and allocating resources for project completion.
For example, a non-profit organization requires an IT team to implement a donor management system. IT team would follow these steps as part of resource management:
- Planning to procure the best-fit donor management system.
- Allocating the IT team to test the system per organizations’ standards, import donor information, set up the system, and train donors on how to use the system.
- Scheduling interdepartmental meetings to understand system requirements and setting up demos to train employees and donors. 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.
Day-to-day operations in IT teams include several minor and major IT projects. All these projects need to be regularly performed to ensure completion within deadlines. Miscommunication, mismanagement, or resource inefficiencies can hinder performance and resource conflicts. This is why organizations need IT resource management to:
1. Optimize IT resources
IT teams utilize hardware, software, and other IT resources for project completion.
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 a total of 50 license seats are entitled to employees.
2. Estimate and reduce costs
IT resource management helps IT managers to match available IT resources where required.
Before IT managers allocate resources, they need to estimate the cost of the proposed project. IT project cost estimation method is used to evaluate and decide if 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 points to determine how long a project will take to complete.
This helps IT teams to better forecast their capacity and invest in cost-effective projects, saving time and resources for business-worthy projects.
3. Efficient IT teams
Overworked IT teams can make mistakes, feel demotivated, or delay task completion. According to hbr article:
IT managers should try to minimize or restrict specific hours for meetings 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. Business expansion
With ever-evolving market structures, most organizations aim to grow their businesses to acquire a larger market share. It becomes essential for IT infrastructure to support this scalability and allocate resources to meet growing operational needs.
5. Strategic goals
All IT resource management processes must closely align with organizational goals to ensure overall success and growth for the organization.
How to overcome IT resource management roadblocks
1. Unexpected IT projects
IT teams take up multiple projects at the start of every quarter. They plan and take up these projects based on priority and available resources. However, ad-hoc projects in between deadlines can disrupt the workflow and impact productivity.
Solution: Flexible resource planning
IT managers should continuously track resource capacity against department workload. If unexpected projects are one-off requests then they can deprioritize less important tasks. However, if it is a recurring pattern, then managers need to hire additional resources to avoid existing team burnout.
IT teams can deprioritize projects based on their impact on business objectives. For example, an urgent task of 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 that employees feel when they are exposed to excessive workloads and extreme workplace stress. According to an article:
Excessive workload in the team is a possible indicator of limited resources. Two to three members in the team to handle multiple projects and also absorb unexpected queries can make it difficult to perform, increase work stress, and decrease productivity.
Solution: 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.
The managers can keep track of 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 days.
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 cater to any unexpected delays and testing.
3. Team unavailability and technology obsolete
Common uncertainties can always occur. IT departments are no different because team members can take time off or get sick occasionally.
Additionally, it is possible that the team realizes in the middle of development testing that they require the latest version. The old version is now replaced and obsolete. This increases the project timeline because procuring a new version will take additional time.
On top of these roadblocks, meeting customers’ requirements is not easy. They request major updates which require extensive time and effort to plan, develop, and test. Meanwhile, multiple test models and iterations are shown to customers, causing 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 to streamline project timelines is to have a clear and realistic strategy in place. At the time of 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.
The scope of the project is another aspect of resource planning. The IT team needs to analyze customer requirements and define the scope of the project. They can state how many resources are required in terms of time, users, and devices.
To reduce back and forth, they can also highlight only one iteration that will be catered to 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. Overburdened resources lack skills
Team members overworked in projects can lead to less or no time for learning new skills or expertise. They have to 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 manage projects and learning simultaneously. A small part of daily meetings can include learning new technologies and trends.
For example, each employee can come up with 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 are finishing up weekly tasks and setting aside planning and brainstorming sessions for the start of 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 meetings free and ad hoc requests are only catered 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 assets are managed to get the most out of available capacity with minimal costs. The resources are efficiently used to increase productivity and reduce roadblocks.
These 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 their 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 reduce unexpected project requests.
3. Real-time IT resource allocation and planning
IT managers are well-informed on all resource activities in real time. They gain insights into allocation and utilization with the help of a dashboard.
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.
IT resource management is crucial for projects to be successful in an organization. An efficient and skilled IT team can result in increased productivity. Combined with a robust IT asset tool to maintain and manage assets, reduces downtime and unexpected delays. Overall, the organization achieves maximum returns by managing IT resources effectively.
