Getting the appropriate IT resources assigned to projects is more complex that it seems. On paper it seems fine, but in practical terms it sucks.
Sure, there are heuristic utilization models available to PMs and Dev Managers to mathemeatically assign resources, but I've never really seen them being used effectively. What in fact really happens is that resources are typically assigned on a "first-come first-served" basis by management. I see it happening all the time.
Late last year, I made the mistake of delaying my project by 3 weeks. I was told I incorrectly allocated too few IT resources, which I presumed were announced by senior management to be available for that e-Biz programme, but what happened was that line managers had these same resources working small critical outages (non-project related) in their departments. So what I thought was a fully allocated project...in fact wasn't! This delay of 3 weeks got me into trouble..
Interestingly enough, the method I used to allocate the resources was good - a simple spreadsheet with all the resources provided to me by the various line managers. I spread these names over a 3 month timeline and started to look at "Valleys and Peaks" - looking for over-utilization/under-utilizations. I then determined who was available and plugged them into my project. I communicated this to all the resources in person at a kick-off meeting and followed up.
Also, my client had a enterprise wide project scheduling tool (Pacific Edge) available to schedule resources, but it wasn't used as intended, so no-one had a real clue as to who was working on what..
What other allocation methods would work?
Just my 2 pesos worth
Jay
