Capacity planning can be a real struggle for project managers and operational leaders. It's tough to find the perfect balance of available time and applicable talent for every project, especially when each one demands your team's absolute best. And outdated tools don't help. If you're still using old project management practices like spreadsheets, you're probably making resource allocation mistakes—you just can't see them.
The good news is that there's a magic bullet for resource allocation: AI capacity planning. Predictive capacity planning tools (like Forecast) let you sidestep the common capacity pitfalls so you can optimize resource allocation and deliver a beautifully-managed project.
Let's take a look at the 5 most common mistakes project managers make when estimating resource capacity, and learn how predictive capacity planning with Forecast helps you avoid them.
1: Over-committing your resources
When you over-task your resources, you might not realize the strain you've put on your team until major cracks start to show in your project. At first, your team will work hard to meet the unrealistic deadlines. But soon, their zeal will start to waver, leading to burnout and a slower project pace. By the time you notice it, you'll have lost weeks. You'll scramble to reassign tasks—and you still won’t be sure you haven’t over-committed resources again.
How Forecast helps
It doesn't have to be this way. Forecast lets you practice data-driven project management so you can see exactly who's working on which projects and tasks. You'll know at a glance whether a new assignment is realistic for your resource or not, and you can reassign that task to a resource with a lighter workload if needed.
Plus, Forecast's data analysis features help you keep track of how each resource is progressing with their assignments. If you see that a team member is working more slowly than you anticipated, you can remove a task from their list and reassign it to someone who has more cycles to spare.
2: Under-utilizing resources
You might think that a conservative approach to resource allocation will help you sidestep mistakes, but under-utilizing your resources is just as inefficient as over-committing them.
If you're under-using your resources, you're wasting valuable time and possibly extending the project's timeline. Plus, you're probably increasing the project budget by creating costly—and completely avoidable—delays. Neither scenario is likely to make your clients very happy.
How Forecast helps
Thanks to tools like Forecast, data-driven project managers can deliver beautifully efficient resource allocation. You can supercharge your capacity planning efforts and achieve perfectly balanced workloads, meaning your resource utilization is always optimized.
3: Lack of real-time data
If you're using an older project management process, you're missing the magic of real-time data.
Using spreadsheets to track resources means that the moment you enter it, your data's stale. Your team has moved on (or possibly fallen behind), and you won't know how they're faring until your next check-in. By that time, it may be too late to course-correct.
Or, you can use a predictive capacity planning tool like Forecast.
How Forecast helps
You'll work with real-time data, so you can see exactly how your resources are progressing through their tasks as it happens. Plus, real-time improves your data quality, giving you up-to-the-minute, accurate project data so you can make savvy resource moves that save time and money for clients.
If your project spans other departments, you'll know that everyone is working with the latest data, unifying your efforts and helping you avoid confusion and resource shortages.
4: Ignoring predictive analytics
When you use a spreadsheet, your data is automatically old. Working with exclusively historical data limits your ability to predict future resource requirements. Instead, you're always looking back, analyzing outdated key performance indicators.
That backwards-facing mindset makes it difficult to practice truly effective capacity planning. You can't see problems before they arise or spot opportunities to accelerate tasks as a resource starts to gain ground.
How Forecast helps
Don't get us wrong—historical data is a vital part of forecasting resource utilization. But for a complete picture of your future demand, you need predictive capacity planning.
Forecast gives you an unmistakable competitive advantage with predictive analytics. It's constantly analyzing your raw data—including your historical data—and searching for clever ways to fine tune your allocation strategy. Make smarter task assignments from Day 1 and resolve potential problems before they become real ones. There's no better way to optimize capacity planning than with Forecast.
5: Poor communication between teams
If your project and resource management teams can't communicate, your project will struggle from the beginning. Miscommunication is frustrating for every team member, especially if it starts to threaten the project's success. But without clear alignment on resource availability and allotment, it's easy to over- or under-schedule resources, or assign them to tasks that are a bad fit for their skill set.
How Forecast helps
We’ve created advanced tools to ensure streamlined communication with the entire team. You can send messages or set up alerts and notifications to share updates on who's available and how each task is progressing. With Forecast, you can do more than communicate with each team—you can foster game-changing collaboration.
Try Forecast
Project management is demanding. You've got to deliver stellar results to high-needs clients within tight deadlines—often on multiple projects at once. Under that kind of pressure, it's easy for capacity planning to become a minefield of misspent time and under-utilized hours.
With Forecast, capacity planning stops being a project hazard and becomes an invaluable asset. Here's why:
- You'll avoid the potential risks of both over- and under-committing your resources
- You'll improve project visibility for every team so that you're all working from the same (real-time) data
- You'll make data-driven decisions on task assignments, based on insights derived from our predictive capacity planning features
- You'll look good at every stakeholder meeting, presenting hours saved and costs cut by your clever resource management skills
Ready to make Forecast an indispensable part of your resource allocation strategy? Schedule a demo today!
