Managing a company that has multiple projects running simultaneously is extremely difficult. Not only are the projects the company tries to deliver challenging in and of themselves, the fact that company resources are limited means resource conflicts are going to arise.
When this happens company’s human resources are pulled in a dozen directions, resulting in decreased productivity. The solution to this widespread problem lies in an effective use of multi-project management software.
In this article, we’ll explore why resource conflicts arise, how project portfolio management software helps resolve them in multi-project environments, and what key factors influence its successful implementation.
What are Resource Conflicts
Resource conflict is a common occurrence in multi-project environments. It’s a situation where in a company that tries too many projects simultaneously the resource capacity is too small to deliver every project in the portfolio. Without the means to either reduce the number of projects in execution or increase resource capacity, project managers start competing for resources and assigning more work than human resources are capable of.
The main reasons for resource conflicts are:
- Lack of visibility. Not understanding what the real resource capacity is leads to taking on more work than is feasible.
- Lack of prioritization. Not being able to sort projects by priority leads to trying to execute them all at once as soon as possible.
- Lack of planning. The two factors above lead to inefficient project and resource scheduling.
As a result of resource conflicts:
- Resources become overloaded with work.
- Long-term productivity suffers due to burnout.
- Short-term project delivery delays arise due to lack of time.
- The company takes financial losses due to project delays and overtime pay.
Finding and resolving resource conflicts by rescheduling less important projects can lead to faster delivery of projects with higher priority and improvements in productivity overall.
How Multi-Project Management Software Helps
Planning and visibility are the main culprits when it comes to ineffective resource management. Here is how project management software can help resolve those issues.
Portfolio visualization
The first step to solving any problem is realizing that you have one. PPM software excels at highlighting current resource-related issues through portfolio visualization. It integrates company resource performance data and presents it in various ways.
- Pipeline view. Highlights which projects run concurrently.
- Gantt chart. Shows project critical chain.
- Bubble view. Highlights projects that are close to using up allocated resource budget.
This gives managers a clear view of the whole portfolio and can guide them to areas that might be problematic.
Resource load analytics
Analyzing resource load is the main way of spotting resource conflicts. At its core, it’s a simple comparison of how many hours resources have and how many hours of work they’re assigned. This can happen on the level of:
- The whole company.
- A resource group, typically a team or a department.
- An individual.
Comparing the two graphs gives a quick way to understand whether the resource in question is overloaded. If it is, multi-project management software typically has multiple ways to determine what projects or tasks the resource is assigned to and understand what causes the conflict.
Many tools also offer future load analytics features. With this analytical approach, managers can spot potential resource bottlenecks before they happen and have the chance to resolve them before they cause problems.
Scenario planning
The previous two sets of features offer several ways of spotting potential resource conflicts and analyzing them. Scenario planning capabilities that many multi-project management tools provide allow to find resolution to these problems.
When resources are torn between two projects and don’t have the capacity to finish both of them at the same time, the only solution is to postpone one of the projects to focus on the other. But making the decision on which project should take priority is difficult to make without concrete data.
Scenario planning features provide all the functionalities for obtaining this data. The way it works is:
- Upload resource capacity data.
- Upload project resource requirements.
- Upload project priority.
- Start a simulation.
- Shift project timelines and view productivity predictions.
- Experiment until you find a portfolio composition that provides the most business value without resource overload.
The results of the scenario simulation provide a clear view of which projects should be postponed.
AI-based portfolio optimization
Some multi-project management software like Epicflow goes a step further than manual scenario planning and provides AI-driven capabilities for portfolio optimization. An AI tool like that can analyze the data on resource needs, constraints, and project priority to develop a single scenario that maximizes business value production.
Key Considerations in Using Multi-Project Management Software
PPM software for multi-project environments has a set of limitations that you have to work around to ensure success. Here are the main ones.
Data quality
The quality of analytics depends on the quality of inputs. To ensure portfolio visualization and analytical outputs are current, you need to ensure that resource-related data points are collected correctly.
Project resource requirements assessment
A core component in resource load analytics is data on how many work hours are needed to deliver a project. If that input is incorrect and your team underestimates the resource needs, the load analytics will show no issues, but the resource conflict will still arise in the future.
If you find this to be a common issue in your company, you can work around that by mandating a buffer of 15%-25% to be added to all assessments.
Project prioritization
The decisions on which projects should stay in the portfolio concurrently are made based on resource capacity, resource needs, and project priority. If the latter is judged incorrectly, or not measured at all, the scenario planning activities won’t produce a desired outcome.
To avoid this problem, create a unified prioritization framework and consistently apply it to all projects.
Conclusions
It’s natural for resource conflicts to arise in a multi-project environment when projects are accepted without proper planning for resource utilization. Multi-project management tools provide all the necessary features to solve these conflicts through:
- Portfolio visualization.
- Resource load analytics.
- Scenario planning.
- AI-driven optimization.
Ensure proper data collection quality, prioritize projects based on well-developed criteria, and communicate the necessity of changes to the stakeholders to improve the odds of successful implementation of these tools.
