Project Management Mastery: Resource Planning, Onboarding Excellence, and Risk Mitigation Strategies

During a kick-off, the Project Director will outline the project's purpose, dive into details of the project and everyone's deliverables, do some brainstorming on risks, and discuss the next steps. 

Resource planning helps Project Directors anticipate the resources required in their team.  Resources are essential for the project to achieve its goals and complete the project.  

The onboarding of the project team is important to the success of the project. Effective onboarding at the beginning and at any time in the project where other subject matter experts or project team members are introduced or swapped out reduces the time it takes these project team members to effectively contribute to the project. 

An organized onboarding process, that goes through the project scope, roles and responsibilities, and the other important things discussed in the associated article – ‘DEVELOP TEAM - Developing the right team’ -will provide a greater chance of success for the project team member to adjust to their new position and start contributing quickly.

Just as the organization's HR department will help the business hire the right people for the business, the Project Director needs to be clear on having a project team with the right mix of skills and energy.  

The Project Director is not responsible for cultivating the skills of their project team members as they should come with expertise in the area they are representing, but they are responsible for maintaining the best customer service experience for both the internal and external stakeholders.

In developing the resource plan required for the project once the project team members are in place, this plan will expand on the resources already procured and will include the quantity of people resources, equipment, and other materials necessary to complete the project.   

The Resource Management Plan includes the project organizational chart for the defined resource requirements and defining and documenting job descriptions for each resource identified.

 

Key Elements of the Resource Plan 

Key Elements of the Resource Plan are for it to communicate the resource requirement and estimated cost of the resources of key decision-making stakeholders.    It will identify and communicate:

• which skills and resources are available within the organisation?
• which skills will be required to be procured from external service providers?  
• the strategy, techniques, and other processes to be employed to manage the resources once on the project
• how the Project Manager intends to build a high performing team on the project

 

The Project Director can use the brainstorming of risks and possible solutions to cut through a lot of the questions and concerns that may be playing on the minds of the project team members at the beginning of the project, and they should take this opportunity to steer their project the right way from the get-go.

 

Estimate Activity Resources

So, how does the Project Director estimate the resources required?

Perhaps a Lessons Learned document (organizational process asset) that a previous project has informed and that talks to the number of resources required to complete work packages?  

Perhaps having discussions with peers in the industry to find out how they delivered key components of their project with subject matter experts.

For project directors to estimate activity resources they will need to work with the manu project documents, organizational process assets and enterprises environment factors available and or known to them, including:

The resources required for each task in the activity list are considered one at a time and rolled up into a final resource and cost estimate

This can be broken down further into estimate activity resource process which allows more accurate cost and duration estimates

 

 

How to Work Out What Resources You Need?

Check the inputs from previous projects and project documents developed so far in your project.  

What do these input documents tell the Project Director?

Sometimes not so much the number of resources required for the work ahead, but if the project documents are reviewed critically, a great deal can be gleaned from piecing together the narrative in the documents as well as following up with internal and external experts to clarify their thoughts.

#1 - Lessons Learned Register

Below is an example of what could be learned from the Lessons Learned Register and that may impact who and when you acquire the resources.

 

What could the Lessons Learned Register tell the Project Manager about the resources required?

Let’s use the scenario of needing to acquire the Change Manager for the programme, the circled problems and issues directly relate to the role of the Change Manager and give an indication of things that will be required to be completed this time or avoided this time.

 

See the circles!  

Perhaps any of these problems and issues can help the Project Manager acquire the resources.   

These relate directly to the 4 steps of the resource acquisition process of:

• Determine required resources
• Acquire resources
• Manage resources
• Control resource usage

 

#2 - Other Project Documents that can help

What are some other documents that can help with determining required resources, and relate directly to the 4 steps of the resource acquisition process of:

 

Brainstorming Risks with Your Project Team

The Project Director will assemble their project team for the 1st Project Working Group meeting and work through risk identification and understanding the sources of risk.

They will provide a checklist for all participants to help them in identifying their project's risks.  This exercise does not explore all risks as there are some risks that are not relevant to be shared with this group of people here, but the type of risks discussed are relevant to the roles of the people in the room and will help to trigger their thinking about what they know about the projects and what they don’t which may result in possible risks.  

This exercise is an opportunity for the project team to work as a group and can be used as a starting point for identifying risks which will go into the Risk Register. There are a variety of other techniques, e.g., brainstorming that should be used to gain a full understanding of the project’s risk situation. The involvement of stakeholders when completing this list will also help you gain a better understanding of the risk environment, rather than for understanding your full risk situation.

This risk brainstorming assumes that the team is just formed but perhaps some of these project team members have been onboard for a while now and their risk profiles have been included in other sessions between them and the Project Director.   Regardless, if this is the case, it is still of value for everyone to participate as some risks may have been overlooked and fresh eyes and ears can add value to old thinking.

There is a big difference between what goes in the Risk Register and what goes in the Issues Register or Issues Log.  Risks are potential issues that may or may not occur and can impact the project negatively, whereas issues have already occurred.

 

Let’s first start with asking the project team about the project itself, and what the project aims to accomplish. 

Understanding the scope of the project will monitor the performance of the project with respect to potential scope changes and maintain the project requirements that define the project scope.

What can the Project Director tell their project team about the business case?  

The business case document and its role is to describe all information necessary to make an investment decision on the viability of the project.  The business case evaluates the benefit, cost and risk of alternative options and provides a rationale for the preferred solution.

 

The expectations and issues of every stakeholder must be understood to provide the successful delivery of a project. 

The PD may not have visibility on all stakeholders at this time, however they must identify those that are impacted by or have influence on the project's outcomes that are known to the project at this early stage.

What about some deployment risks? Does the project team feel they have the capability to support key business processes? Are there any blockers to mobilisation bid management?  

Some of these risks may not be answered at this time, and these may be talking points in up and coming PWG meetings.  

 

Some of the below risks relate to stakeholder engagement and management throughout selection, establishment, transition and steady states?  

Looking to avoid perceptions of changes not perceived to be of value, and resistance to chance, or non-cooperation, or reduced benefits to stakeholders

 

A Change Management Plan will be developed by the Change Manager & Project Director and will be executed once approval is provided by the PCG.  

A whole heap of issues may have control descriptions such as these! 

- Project Director whole heap of issues may have control descriptions such as these!

• Accredited, Qualified or Trained Internal / External Team Members
• The Project team is made up of suitable team members, both internal staff and external consultants where required
• Supplier engagement value is clear
• Process is in place for conflict mitigation with business strategies 
• Adequate capability or capacity to deliver project
• Adequate end-to-end client organization and supplier technology, systems and connectivity
• BCP for business interruption of supplier's services due to disruptive event or failure of supplier technology, processes or people
• BCP for business interruption to client organization due to failure of systems, processes or people
• Supplier products and services that will deliver to expectations
• Sensitive customer or corporate information protected
• Success in to meeting government, foreign legal and regulatory requirements
• Adequate governance of supplier, engagement or project
• Contractual agreement/s are fit for purpose
• Adequate licensing
• Success in recognising and managing project dependencies
• Adequate testing and quality assurance
• Effective stakeholder and organizational change management
• Procurement/ outsourcing activity results in a negative impact on staff productivity and morale
• Inadequate in-house capability subsequent to procurement/ outsourcing of business activity
• Concentration risk for a specific Supplier, location or country
• OH&S risk to Suncorp employees visiting Supplier locations
  
  

Once the risks are discussed and description provided, there will be some risks that may need to go into the Risk Register.

Every organization has its own version of a Risk Register or Risk Log -but this may look familiar!

Depending on the type of project you are running you may need a risk register on the larger size, or you may need a simpler version. 

 

There are many risks to a project and the Project Director can’t mitigate these risks on their own.  They need the help of their key project consultants to keep a watchful eye on contractual arrangements, work performance, and scope creep - of themselves and of others! 

Not all team members will have the same experience in projects and therefore may not consider the number of issues that can become risks to the project.  Putting effort into the onboarding and forming, storming and norming the project team - by leaving no doubt the scope of the project, (project appreciation) and identifying all cross-project initiatives and dependencies sub-projects or programs of work will help build trust in the Project Director. 

The project team will be more confident once you understand the background, future approach, non-negotiable boundaries (hard stops), and swim lanes