Resource Plan

Term Definition
A resource plan addresses how the project will be resourced and what supporting services, infrastructure and third party services will be required. Resource plans enable organizations to maximize resource utilization, balance supply and demand and plan resources over the entire project lifecycle. Companies may also use resource plans to identify resources, which could include human, capital, time, or technological (a word is missing here I think) needed to achieve strategic goals.

An organization resource plan will look at the organization's needs rather than an individual project's needs. One component of an organization resource plan might be a resource procurement strategy - how will the company obtain the resources needed to achieve their strategic plans.

Project and resource managers use resource plans to express resource requirements in terms of resources needed over a period of time. In the early stages of project planning, indicating for example that you will need “four analysts and two finance managers for five months” is useful. However, in later stages, resource requirements will be  fine-tuned and derive from project plans and timesheets as resources are assigned to tasks.

Good project accounting, resource utilization and allocation, budget tracking, scope control, and schedule management are major factors that influence the success of any project. Additionally, a company's project portfolio invariably contains professional services initiatives that will have enormous impact on the enterprise, either positively or negatively. Project selection,
ROI (return on investment) analysis, risk identification and mitigation, therefore, are crucial. Regulatory factors including Sarbanes-Oxley (Bill 198 in Canada), and government accounting requirements call for transparency in transactions and record keeping, regardless of the complexity of the operations involved. This transparency must exist throughout the project and service delivery lifecycle, from individual project team members to the billing manager and on to the executive suite. At each point in the process, the professional services data available for access must be role-specific, so that an individual can easily get to it and understand the information needed to make informed decisions.

Related Terms
Availability
Resource Calendar

Your Comments and Recommendations

Please help us improve the project management software glossary. Was this term well described? Any suggestions of how we can improve the description, what to add, remove or change? You can also use this form to suggest new project management terms we should add to the glossary.