Resource-Budget reconciliation

The initial setup phase of a project is always the most exciting; but often it is also the most frantic. I have spent most of the past week securing the right resources I need for project Condor. It has been difficult because :

• I do not know enough about the detailed work to be done to know who best to assign it to
• I do not know enough about the people who work here to know who best to assign.

As of this afternoon, however, I have sufficient candidates to get the job done. There remains the less-exciting tasks of getting some of them released from their current assignments (because Condor has priority) and filling in 20-odd resource request forms. Ugh!

The last thing I did this afternoon was to try to reconcile the people assigned with the original effort and hence the project budget. When I plot out each persons effort across the project timeline and multiply that by their man-day rate, I get a figure approximately 230 man-days over the allocated budget. Ooops. So tomorrow, in between meetings, I am going to have to go back over everything again and check that the people I have asked for, and their allocated time and cost, fit within the available budget.

What fun:-(

It occurred to me during all this that I do not have a simple tool to do all of the following:

• specify my resource requirements
• allocate people to each role across the project timeline
• calculate the effort of each person (or group of people) and the total effort and cost.

By the time I get everyone allocated, I resolve to have created a tool.