Resources for Project Management (P2)
People
The staffing involved in the project must have the correct skillset and knowledge that is required to
complete their given roles, with enough staff assigned to sectors so to prevent staff from being overloaded
while other teams are waiting for the next step. It is important to not only make sure
they specialise in their role, but are passionate and have the motivation for the
project, these traits will allow team members to provide high-quality work while
working efficiently. In small projects, a single person may have all the skills needed
to complete all or most of the project, but in larger business projects - teams will
be required with different specialist for the different sectors, such as Programmers,
Product developers, system analyst, and an experienced project manager.
Equipment and Facilities
The project will simply not be carried out if the necessary hardware, software, and facilities are not
available, causing the project to be slowed down as staff are waiting for the required equipment/facilities
they need to continue. The organisation needs to be fully complete the preparation phase to ensure
minimal setbacks before executing, instead of falling at the first hurdle. The equipment or facilities could
include anything depending on the project such as machinery if the deliverables are physical products or
office space and furniture for desk work. If specialised equipment is needed, assign appropriate time to the
design and building of the equipment.
Finance
A set budget with financial backing is needed to pay for resources such as the hardware, software, staff,
and other resources that are required, with extra for inevitable setbacks. To fail to prepare means not
enough money to continue and project will fail. It is a good idea to ask stakeholders and contacts for use of
their (reusable) resources, which could be free or cheaper to rent than purchase. There are also investors
available that will invest for a varying percentage of the organisation’s profits or crowdfunding websites
such as GoFundMe where you can pitch your project and its deliverables to the public for donations.
Project management tools
A cloud storage service is very useful in team-based projects where work
must be shared with each other to communicate, contribute, and pass on to
the next team. A service like OneDrive or Dropbox will allow team members
to quickly, and efficiently share their work by sharing documents and
folders online that they can access anywhere. The Microsoft 365 package
will help in creating information stores on task and their expected time, staff,
budget, and how it depends on another task while updating it as the project
progress. The software included in office 365, along with specialised software like Microsoft project, will
allow charts and reports to be created to help manage a project, and present its progress to stakeholders.
A simple project planner is Microsoft Planner that is included in office 365, on this app, you can create projects
which allow you to add people to the project, create task to do with their start and finish dates with comments at
the bottom. You can assign people to certain task and view a chart of the overall projects progress. Meanwhile,
Outlook email can be used for staff to communicate with each other as well.
