Resource Management Made Easy: Learning the Key Principles in a Playful Way

Resource Management: A Marketplace of Supply and Demand

Resource management is a challenging topic that affects many companies from a wide variety of industries: What resources are available to us? Which projects and investments can we manage without overburdening our employees?

Addressing these questions is important because realistic planning has a direct impact on employee satisfaction while ensuring you don‘t waste resources (and associated costs). In addition, you get planning security for your projects and can meet the requirements of the market.

Basically, Resource Management Works like a Marketplace:

• Supply of resources (= employees) with different skills, which is managed across projects by resource managers or the team leader
• Demand for resources to carry out projects, e.g., from project managers

The aim is to optimally staff your projects at the company with resources in such a way that employees are never given too little to do or overburdened, and the right projects can be carried out at the right time.

Our recommendation: Familiarize your team with the most important principles of functioning resource planning at an early stage. And what better way to do that than in a playful way?

The Game: “Resource Management – Place Your Bets”

With our game “Resource Management – Place Your Bets”, you will playfully dive into the world of resource management. In several rounds, you will get to know the most important principles of functioning planning on an abstract level and in a fun way and find out under which conditions you can realistically plan your projects and resources. To all project and resource managers out there: Get ready and place your bets!

Basic Information

• Number of Players: 6 – 12 People
• Duration: approx. 90 minutes
• Target Group: Project Managers, Resource Managers, Management, Team Leads, PMO, Employees, Project Members

Gameplay

All players spread out around a large table and are given a role for the game by the dealer: resource manager, project manager, manager, or employee. A total of four rounds are played, after each round the points are awarded by the dealer.

The Project Managers’ Task

The project managers are each given different projects (e.g., construction of a production plant, website launch) which are to be scheduled on their project plan in a given period of time (e.g., t = 3 – 6) and staffed with the appropriate resources. The goal of the project managers is therefore to obtain sufficient resources with the required skills to be able to implement their projects.

The Resource Managers’ Task

Opposite them sit the resource managers: They manage the resources available in the game (represented as modified Skat cards). The goal of this role is to achieve optimal utilization of the employees – if possible, without having any resources left over at the end of the day.

Each round of the game has its own rules: Sometimes the project managers are allowed to simply take the resources, and sometimes they have to request them from the resource managers. Sometimes they are allowed to exchange information with the other players, sometimes they have no insight into the planning.

In addition to these two roles, there are managers and employees who take on an observational role in the game and are allowed to subjectively evaluate the outcome of each round. The management always has the company’s optimum in mind, while the employees are primarily concerned with their own workload.

The overall aim of the game is to score as many points as possible together as a team: You want to achieve the maximum for your company, implement your projects in the best possible way and thus survive in the market.

With the help of additional event and risk cards, you can take the idea further: What if resources are absent due to illness? Or what if a new project has to be scheduled at short notice? What happens if resources are committed even though they are not available?

Our Best Practices for Your Resource Management

• Communication

  Talk to each other, e.g., during a weekly resources roundtable. This usually works better than time-delayed communication via a tool.

• Transparency

  Knowing what the other team members need makes it much easier to find a solution and supports the acceptance of decisions.

• Prioritization

  Prioritize your projects as part of a project portfolio. This allows you to efficiently decide where (limited) resources should be allocated.

• Anchoring Your Processes

  Focus on embedding your processes instead of following abstract theories. Conduct trainings, communicate the added value, and involve your team!

• Uniform Mindset

  Ensure a uniform mindset and understanding while taking into account your company‘s specific culture.

• Holistic View

  You will achieve maximum success if you include all relevant factors, roles, and information in the planning.

• Continuous Planning

  Allow yourself enough of a margin to react to short-term changes or needs. Be agile, including in your resource and project portfolio planning!

• Trust & Pragmatism

  Rely on self-organization and pragmatic decisions. Reduce the level of complexity in your processes to ensure that they remain applicable across many project types.

Software Support: Resource Management with Clarity and itd Advanced Resource Planning

The resource management game will show you: While having fun, you get a good overview of the complexity and key principles of cross-project resource planning. Our add-on itd Advanced Resource Planning for Clarity follows the same approach: Thanks to many additional functionalities, you get the transparency you need about your resources and can master this challenge in real life with ease.

See the big picture without having to switch between views. Visual representations of your cross-project resource planning give you instant feedback on current capacity utilization and where bottlenecks or idles are occurring. Simulations and scenario planning are also available. Find the sweet spot!