Project Management For Dummies, 6th Edition

Chapter 8

Establishing Whom You Need, How Much of Their Time, and When

IN THIS CHAPTER

Focusing first on people’s abilities

Accurately planning your project’s personnel needs

Striking a balance among all your resource commitments

Consider the following declaration by a stressed-out project manager: “We’ve done so much with so little for so long [that] they now expect us to do everything with nothing!”

Of course, the truth is you can’t accomplish anything for nothing; everything has a cost. You live in a world of limited resources and not enough time, which means you always have more work to do than the available time and resources will support. However, carefully determining the number and characteristics of the personnel you need to perform your project and when you’ll need them increases your chances of succeeding by enabling you to do the following:

• Ensure the most qualified people available are assigned to each task.
• Explain more effectively to team members what you’re asking them to contribute to the project.
• Develop more-accurate and more-realistic schedules.
• Ensure that people are on hand when they’re needed.
• Monitor resource expenditures to identify and address possible ...