Project Management Stack Exchange
Project Management Stack Exchange

Questions tagged [resource-planning]

Resource Planning is a method for the effective planning of all variety of company's resources. Such resources may be people, funds, equipment, etc. On this site, Resource Planning usually means workforce of the people assigned to a certain project.

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Is it sound project management practice to make software engineers fix bugs "off the clock"?

I work in a largish, multi-team software development shop that builds a vertical B2B solution suite for a highly regulated domain. We are trying to become more Agile; we are iterating better than we have in the past, but there is still a lot of…
Larry Domonico
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Do projects ever end early?

When scheduling, I tend to add a lot of reality into the guestimates I am provided with. I always add in generous amounts of probable sick days for manpower and extra time for integration and bug fixing. (All this based on decades of experience.) As…
Danny Schoemann
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Should a PM also be a resource on the project? Why?

we have a small team of highly technical people and one of them is the project manager for the project. The person who is in PM role for this project is experienced and has previous project management experience also. So it felt 'natural' for him to…
JBRWilkinson
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Should a Product Owner be asking developers to do QA to meet deadlines?

When the deadline is tight and when there are not enough QA people, the Product Owner asks developers to join in with QA to meet the deadline. What should the developers do when this happens? What's the right thing to do from a Scrum…
Danijel
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What is the typical ratio of PM/EM hours to "work" hours in a project?

What is the rule-of-thumb ratio of Project Manager/Engagement Manager time to overall project time (e.g. man-hours for work products) in a project? I'm especially interested in an answer within the context of a Professional Services engagement,…
warren
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What should be ideal ratio of developers and testers?

I am in the process of hiring resources for testing team. I have none currently. What should be the number of testers if my developers are 10? Is there any rule of thumb which specifies how many testers should be there for given number of…
meetpd
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Managing a Product Owner in a not-yet-agile organization

When my company was acquired, my 20-person development team gained a Product Owner who is energetic, engaged, and extremely idealistic. While many of the programmers on our team are familiar with agile principles, our methodology has been eclectic…
Linda Schmandt
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Is PM considered a billable resource?

In a software development firm that I work for, contracts are billed based on 3 items: Design, Development, and PM. Example: A simple software project could take 200 hours and would be broken down into the following hours: 90/90/20…
JTech
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How to execute a project with two resources where you need three resources?

Recently, I participated in a Project Manager interview and the following question were raised. What would be the correct answer for that? A software development project is needed three resources to complete within three months. The head of the PMO…
Pesil
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How can I schedule resources across multiple projects?

Drawing from the body and comments of a previous question, what is the best way to schedule simultaneous projects and resources to those projects? For example, in a group of 16 staff, each working on multiple projects, each with an iteration cycle…
warren
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What techniques are useful when factoring in the likelihood that one or more members of the team may take leave during a project?

What's the best way of planning for the possibility that a key member(s) of the team might want to take leave at some point during a project? I understand one solution is to buffer the project sufficiently so that the project / task can soak up this…
cw84
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What's the ideal ratio of roles on an agile team?

I work in a large company that is in the process of transitioning to Agile. I suspect our ratios for the various roles are way off, especially for the technical writers. What is the ideal head-count ratio for the various non-managerial…
Cheryl B
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How can I track team member utilization across a range of projects?

I have a fixed-sized team (with fixed-hours) and products, more than the team can handle. At any given time, while my resources are working on one product, requests keep flowing in about work on other products--most of them with conflicting…
legendofawesomeness
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How can I make company-wide scheduling and resource allocation decisions?

I've recently been taken on in a Programme Management role for a software company. There are several definitions of Programme / Program Manager out there - my role encompasses, amongst other things: Managing scheduling across the company's…
cw84
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Software tool for resource pipeline planning for multiple projects

My company has about 20 - 30 open projects at any given time, as well as 5 - 10 that have been approved and will start within the next few weeks. We currently use Basecamp to manage the projects and break them down by hours per area, i.e. 45 hours…
CRoseman
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