Once the new project plan is approved and a skills capacity check confirms that sufficient resources should be available, resource allocation can commence. Whatever the process, Project managers and Team leaders must collaborate effectively if individual projects are not to suffer.
Organisations can have quite different approaches to resource allocation. Innate provides a flexible framework so that, once we’ve understood the rules, the system can be configured to suit.
Requesting Resources
With the technical complexity of projects increasing, project managers are having to specify more precisely the skills and competency levels that they need. There may only be a few individuals that meet each requirement, but resorting to lesser skilled staff can have significant ramifications for the project.
Project managers will want to specify the primary role or discipline that they need, plus any particular skills and competency requirements. They can easily see how well each proposed candidate measures up.
Innate handles skills related data as a matrix so project managers can easily specify the skills and competency levels required for each task. System > ERP > NetSuite, with a minimum competency of Advanced is shown as a requirement in the screenshot below:
Skill and competency requirements for an Analyst to work on the Specify task
Each Team leader sees this detail when searching for suitable candidates. Whenever their proposed resource fails to meet a required competency level, the non-compliance is highlighted in red, as shown below:
The non-compliance of Pat Pringle, the proposed Analyst, is highlighted in red
This alerts the project manager to any shortfall, helping them to decide whether to accept or reject the proposed candidate.
Dealing with Resource Requests
Using a list of outstanding requests for their staff, Team leaders have a couple of ways of identifying and proposing suitable candidates.
For more complex requests, where skill and competency requirements have been specified, the requirements can be applied as search criteria. This displays a list of suitable candidates, ordered by their availability and how well they comply, as shown in the video below: