How Resource Planning Complements Agile
Some people wonder if and how resource planning applies in an Agile world and how Agile resource planning works. There should be no question. Regardless of whether or not your Agile projects use a traditional or iterative structure, resource planning will always drive the project forward. The question is, regardless of delivery approach: How do we make sure we have the capacity to deliver on our strategies at the right time?
Resource Planning Turbo-Charges Agile Performance
Agile is driven by a stringent workflow, and planning capacity is integral to success. Resource planning in Agile is key to ensuring the productivity of your team.
Indeed, Agile brings a lean, adaptive mindset and a continuous flow of value. Planning adds management with strategy, funding, and resources. These are not mutually exclusive concepts and, in fact, complement one another.
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The 5 Common Phases of Agile Resource Planning
- The Envision stage of resource planning in agile aligns directly with traditional agile processes as it involves coordination with stakeholders, project conceptualization, identifying objectives and understanding needs.
- In the Speculate phase, an outline of the final product is often developed, and this is when many agile project managers would start building out the project timeline, creating milestones, and delegating tasks, but there is a crucial piece missing that agile resource management software helps solve, and that is to think about your resources first! Do you already have the people and skill-sets needed to deliver the project? Probably. But, what you may not be taking into account is your resources’ capacity to accomplish all that needs to get the project delivered on time and on budget. That’s part of the reason we call our resource planning software, ResourceFirst!
- In the Explore stage, your agile team looks at alternatives to meet all the requirements to deliver a high quality final project.
- The Adapt stage of the agile resource planning process embodies the necessary skill of your agile team to adapt and overcome whatever blockers or challenges your team, industry, or the project itself are experiencing.
- Finally, the Close stage reviews all the project requirements from beginning to end to ensure the final delivered project meets or exceeds expectations. A post-mortum team meeting often takes place after the project is delivered to stakeholders, and this conversation usually focuses on what went right and what went wrong so mistakes made during this project are not repeated in the future.
The Empowerment and Freedom of Agile Planning
PDWare addresses agile planning in our resource management software by allowing people to be allocated to teams by percentage, and then assigning teams to projects. Both numbers are considered in the individual’s allocation forecast, along with any other work activities they’re assigned to. This allows the automatic creation of a combined resource forecast across Agile and non-Agile work.
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