Resource Planning for Multiple Projects: Best Practices for Efficient Multi-Project Management

Even if you’re an expert project manager, handling resource planning for multiple projects is a unique challenge in itself.

To manage multiple projects, you’ll need tight control over all key factors for successful project delivery. This includes project timelines, project budgets, and project teams. To achieve this, efficient resource management is indispensable.

Nowadays, this is synonymous with resource management software. With automation, real-time forecasting, and collaboration features, project managers can optimize how they allocate resources and tasks across projects. Whether you’re a seasoned project manager or relatively new to the field, getting the most out of technology is crucial to improving your project resource management process.

This guide aims to provide a comprehensive overview of resource planning within multi-project management. Keep reading to learn more.

Resource planning includes the process of assessment, strategic allocation, and scheduling of various resources. In an agency context, these resources will likely be staff, time, and budget, but they can include various material resources, such as facilities and equipment. The main goal of resource planning is to ensure that a project is progressing smoothly, without unforeseen gaps in resources or uneven employee workloads that can cause stress and burnout.

Some of the main benefits of efficient resource planning are the following:

Effective resource planning is something that many agencies grapple with, especially in the context of project portfolio management. According to a Wellingtone report, poor resource management was among the top three main challenges for agencies in 2020, with “attempting to run too many projects” in the first place.

These two issues are often connected, as inadequate planning can cause agencies to overcommit their resources, causing bottlenecks and poor service delivery down the line.

Source: Harvard Business Review

When it comes to resource planning for single and multiple projects, the main differences lie in the increased complexity and scope. With multi-project resource planning, prioritization, effective change management, team collaboration, and visibility all become even more important.

One of the main difficulties is balancing competing demands for the same resources. For project or resource managers to be able to handle this correctly, they need to have a comprehensive grasp of the state of their resources. This includes knowledge of their capacity and commitment to specific tasks and personal considerations such as individual skills and affinities.

Considering that 60% of project managers are running between two and five projects (RGPM), having this type of insight is challenging, to say the least. This is why maintaining visibility over resource availability, including real-time monitoring is so crucial. Additionally, client engagements are often very unpredictable, with 50% of projects experiencing some sort of scope creep (PMI).

This all goes to show that having the ability to accommodate changes at short notice is key to successful end-to-end project management.

In the following section, we’ll cover the four most common mistakes in resource planning for multiple projects, and how you can best address them. We’ll provide you with specific examples of software features that can help you improve your processes and first-hand insights from industry professionals.

Keep reading to find the answer to the question: How do you use technology to improve resource planning? 

No matter if your agency is small or large, working on projects with a narrower or broader scope, working in silos is one of the biggest detriments to effective processes:

Source: PWC

What is the most common cause of silos?

Usually, it’s using multiple different tools and processes between different project teams. For example, one project manager might introduce a specific project management tool, but the same is not applied agency-wide. This is a more frequent issue for larger agencies with multiple ongoing projects and larger IT budgets.

In smaller companies, the main cause for silos is lack of project visibility between cross-functional teams. In fact, data shows that 39% of employees worldwide believe that people in their organization don’t collaborate enough (Queens University).

For example, on a development project, a developer and a member of the marketing team might have virtually no idea what either one is doing. While it’s difficult and often unnecessary to have different departments working hand in hand 100% of the time, by maintaining a unified strategy, you can significantly improve both project and agency outcomes.

The quickest and easiest way of achieving this is to invest in software that can provide project visibility and support to teams of all shapes and sizes. Additionally, choosing an all-in-one agency management software that targets multiple agency processes at once can help you cut out additional tools from the process, which further improves agency-wide standardization.

Take for example Productive, the comprehensive agency management software. Productive combines simplified Project Management with support for sales teams in the integrated Sales Pipeline. You can manage your project progress with task management and automated notifications, all the while tracking your leads down the sales funnel and converting won deals into projects.

Additionally, software like Productive can help you set up better client feedback processes. Just like you would share your project boards with your teams, you can invite clients to projects so they can leave comments on tasks. All of this can significantly help cut down on administrative tasks, which gives you more freedom and time to allocate resources to strategic tasks across multiple projects.

Learn more about how Productive can help you optimize your resourcing:

Another big roadblock to efficient resource management is using manual processes for activities that require constant upkeep. Take, for example, the fundamental document for resource management, a resource plan. If a resource manager handles this using an Excel spreadsheet, this means that they will constantly need to go back and manually reschedule tasks. Sooner or later, details will start slipping through the cracks.

By automating this process with a project management solution, you will be resolving two issues at once: data inaccuracy and inefficient processes.

This is the importance of having a real-time overview that is highly reactive to changes. For example, once you allocate your resources with Productive, you can get insights into your project budget burn, all the way up until the deadline. And if you reschedule some of these resources, you can go back to the burn chart and check what this means for your finances. You can even switch to the project profitability overview to manage profit margins.

This lets you respond to client requests in a timely manner, as well as make informed decisions. For example, even if you’re over budget, you might still be making a profit on certain projects. This depends mostly on your resource cost rates. Without using a responsive project capacity planning tool, it’ll be significantly harder to determine the actual costs of projects in time.

Beyond the resourcing plan, your project reporting will also benefit immensely from using a tool for managing multiple projects. With Productive’s Reporting feature, you can access 50+ agency-focused templates. Instead of updating them manually, you can benefit from data being pulled directly from the platform. You can even schedule reports to be sent to your or external emails, and keep all project stakeholders in touch with your progress.

Learn how Productive helps companies optimize business results.

Continuing on from the previous point, another sign of poor project capacity planning is working blind. A great way to improve your project management is to compare your scheduled time with project actuals. With Productive’s Budgeting and Time Tracking features, you can get accurate insights into how much time was really spent on billable vs non-billable tasks.

How does this work?

Simply set up your project budget, whether hourly, fixed-price, or mixed. Then, your employees can track their time across these budgets, either by using the timer or by manually inputting time spent on each task.

By connecting your budgeting and time management, you can also keep a closer eye on your project spending. For example, Productive lets you set up warnings for a percentage of chargeable hours spent on a project. Then, you can check the actual project progress, and see whether you need to reallocate resources or resolve internal conflicts to improve your project workstreams (learn more about examples of workstreams and how to manage them successfully).

Another important factor to keep in mind is your billable utilization, or the percentage of time spent on billable tasks. This is one of the most important agency metrics because it shows you how productive your employees really are. With Productive, you can track utilization across various metrics, including departments, seniority, skills, and more.

You can even compare your utilization and profitability between different projects, which can help you prioritize. Which projects are your high earners? Which ones require extensive non-billable work due to miscommunication or frequent out-of-scope requests? By getting the answers to these questions, a project analyst or manager can make key decisions for the agency’s success.

Finally, there’s the question of roadblocks in project progress due to improper resource allocation. This is usually when a task can’t be completed because the person who has the required skill set is either committed to another project or is unavailable to work.
How can you avoid these resource conflicts?

These issues might arise from two main challenges: one usually concerns a lack of organization on the manager level, while another concerns high-level mismanagement of human resources.

When it comes to the former, a simple example is inadequate leave management.

When managers handle requests in Excel or other easily misplaced documents, situations where project tasks are late due to unavailable resources frequently happen. Consider also state holidays. How many times are resources scheduled without regard for mandatory time off?

Productive provides a simple solution with integrated leave management. Resource managers can input agency-specific types of leave and define which employees are eligible for it. When it comes to holidays, you can easily import them from a calendar for your specific country. This gives you a full overview of your team’s resource availability.

Another frequent scenario is caused by agencies taking on too many projects at once. These types of resource constraints are often caused by inadequate planning. One way to resolve this is by using software with forecasting features, such as Productive.

You can create a utilization report for specific date ranges and check how busy certain skills or departments will be during certain periods of time. You can also use placeholders to account for new hires, and then gauge how the potential project would be progressing budget and profit-wise.

This is how Infinum, a digital agency with clients worldwide, uses Productive to support hiring for resource demand:

Learn how a business can manage hundreds of people with Productive.

All of these features can help you improve your risk management by helping you stay one step ahead of your project.

After exploring some common roadblocks in resource planning for multiple projects, we’ll expand on this with the four key strategies you can utilize in order to improve how you’re managing your enterprise resources. These are project prioritization, maintaining realistic client expectations, managing your agency’s utilization rate, and implementing resource management software.

Consider the Pareto Principle, which suggests that 80% of goals arise from 20% of efforts. Applied to the topic of client prioritization, it would signify that a smaller amount of clients are actually bringing significant profits to your agency. Taking for example the context of consulting agencies, this would mean that:

Source: Investopedia

However, this is something you must be able to control in a multi-project environment. Trying to put the same amount of effort into all of your projects can end up stretching your resources too thin and causing burnout. Additionally, you will likely produce low-quality results across the board, rather than delivering a mix of outstanding and acceptable work.

This is why it’s essential to determine your project priority ahead of time so that you know exactly what to do once resource conflicts arise. Sometimes, the pitfall is in deciding which projects you should prioritize. To help you develop your prioritization strategy, ask yourself two main questions:

Once you have the answers to the questions above, consider which projects align most with your agency’s priorities. To do this, you can use software that can give you a comparison of how different projects are performing profitability-wise. This can be a great first step to determining basic project value.

Then, consider qualitative factors. Prioritizing based on profitability involves not just looking at the immediate financial gains but also considering the long-term strategic value, such as fostering relationships with key clients or venturing into new markets.

In short, prioritization is one of the key processes for any agency managing multiple projects at the same time. Developing a strategy on how to assess and allocate resources accordingly is crucial to ensuring overall project and agency success.

According to the 2015 Chaos Report, under 50% of projects are completed on time and on budget, with a little over 50% being completed on target, or with all promised functionalities.

When it comes to improving your agency’s project delivery, we’ve already given tips for streamlining your project planning and project management during the execution phase.

These include:

Now, let’s consider the project initiation and planning process. Are you establishing realistic expectations and defining everything that needs to be done in your client contract clearly enough?

Take website project management: one of the main things that are often overlooked in client contracts is just how extensive the maintenance period of development should be. This also includes the scope of changes that are expected to be applied: does this include bug fixes or additional feature requests?

It’s important to put all of these terms into place in order to prevent the overcommitment of resources, as well as client dissatisfaction.

Moving past the contract stage, maintaining transparent communication with project stakeholders throughout the process is equally important. This involves regularly updating them about the project’s progress, potential roadblocks, and any changes in resource allocation or timelines. A simple way to improve your client communications would be by using project management software for agencies.

For example, with Productive you can invite clients to your projects free of charge. Your clients can directly view the progress made on tasks, as well as leave comments on particular deliverables. This can significantly speed up the feedback process, as everyone involved can immediately view what needs to be done, without the need for a manager to play middle man.

Additionally, you can open advanced permission so that clients can view basic information on budgets and time sheets, including prices, time worked, and estimated time on tasks.

All of this can help you enhance stakeholder trust and improve the chances of delivering your project within the set scope, project schedule, and budget.

One of the best ways to measure the success of your resource planning efforts is your agency’s utilization rate. As previously mentioned, the resource utilization formula is calculated as the percentage of billable hours vs non-billable hours worked. It can show you which projects need to be improved, and which are performing optimally.

Another important thing that the utilization rate indicates is whether you’re burdening your resources too much. Don’t fall into the trap of aiming for perfect utilization — Though standards vary somewhat depending on the industry, the recommended resource utilization rate stands between 75 to 80%.

If your utilization rate is significantly higher, this could mean that your employees are close to burning out. It also signifies that you don’t invest enough in learning and building skills, which are equally important for your employee and agency growth. On the other hand, a low utilization rate can mean one of two things:

As you can see, even a low utilization rate can ultimately mean good things for your business, as long as you’re thinking strategically. In any case, finding the best ERP for professional services with real-time utilization insights is key for optimal resourcing.

Find out more about utilization, the key agency metric:

One of the main things that we’ve established throughout this article is the importance of investing in software for resource management. As our final advice, we’ll give you the three top considerations to keep in mind when researching the best resource planning agency tools.

The main thing to keep in mind when resource planning for multiple projects is that the challenges are unique when compared to balancing resources across a single project. Moreso than ever, it’s important to optimize your resource management processes by applying the following key strategies: project prioritization, setting down clear terms of contract, and implementing software that can support your progress.

A good resource planning tool can unify your team workflows, provide accurate data for timely decision-making, as well as ensure that you can plan resources with regard to their availability. Additionally, certain solutions can provide advanced forecasting capabilities and insights into key agency metrics, such as billable utilization.

Consider choosing a system that can do all of the above, while providing a user-friendly, scalable solution for professional services.

Interested? Book a demo with Productive to find out what an all-in-one agency management software can do for your agency today.

In an agency context, we can distinguish three key types of resources: these are human resources, time resources, and financial resources. Human resources are the agency’s employees and their characteristics, including skills, seniority, and expertise. Time resources are closely connected to human resources, as they refer to the amount of time you have at your disposal for completing project tasks. Finally, financial resources relate to your project budget, as well as your overall agency capital used to run operations and invest in growth. Proper management and optimization of these resources are critical in ensuring the success and sustainability of an agency.

Resource smoothing is a technique that can be used in order to address constraints in the resource pool. It consists of balancing your resources across one or several projects while keeping track of tasks and their dependencies to avoid extending project schedules. For example, a manager might reallocate a designer to work on a different project to satisfy workload gaps, if they know that they’re ahead of their tasks on their current project.

Resource leveling is one of the main risk management methodologies utilized during the project execution phase. It aims to avoid under or over-utilization while shifting the start and end dates of project tasks. Unlike resource scheduling, resource leveling often results in the extension of project deadlines or delayed tasks, but ensures a more balanced distribution of resource demand to minimize burnout.

An example of software for resource planning on multiple projects is Productive. With Productive, you can manage your resource plan in real time, balance workloads with the help of heat maps, take into account employee leave, as well as forecast key metrics such as profitability and budget burn. Some other examples of software with some of the above-mentioned features for managing multiple resources are Resource Guru and LiquidPlanner.