Resource Management Works in an Agile Environment

Resource Management Supporting Agile vs. Waterfall Approaches

Most IT professionals will approach resource management processes from two angles, depending on the project management methodology of their choice: waterfall or agile processes for project execution and program development. Both of these methods brings with them specific benefits and tradeoffs, and require different approaches to resource management. This article focuses on agile methodologies, which are gaining momentum industry-wide.

One key difference between the two approaches is waterfall methods require a continuous cycle of pre-planned activity leading up to the final outcome. Agile methods instead involve a series of smaller iterative completed steps leading up to the end. Therefore, resource planning for an agile environment must consider these key differences: 

Agile shifts the focus from the project to the "product," or the outcome of the effort, not the execution of the project plan itself.

Work is broken down in smaller increments (sometimes called sprints) leading up to a finished "product."

Resources are assigned to iterations (or sprints) rather than entire projects, and may be assigned to multiple sprints at the same time.

Shorter planning cycles minimize the amount of up front planning and therefore require more resource flexibility.

Because of the short duration, reduced planning and higher volume of sprints, project teams generally have less visibility into the details of a particular sprint.

In summary the agile methodology employs less rigorous planning, leading to less visibility and predictability to staff allocation and productivity. But good resource management fundamentals still apply and should be adhered to here, in what is a more challenging environment for resource planning and allocation.

Related Article: Agile, Kanban & Scrum, Oh My: Which Product Management Method Is Right For You?

Applying Supply and Demand Principles

Agile resource management requires a slightly different approach to understanding resource supply and demand, especially when it comes to how teams are organized and how resources are leveraged to create project teams.

The demand side is always the hardest aspect to solve given the reduced planning effort involved with agile. Also, organizations struggle to plan for unfunded or unapproved work, causing teams to be more reactive than proactive in staffing projects.

Identifying Supply

The best way to know your supply is to develop a resource management plan within the constructs of agile project methodology. This means having a normalized and manageable set of roles, a functioning and well-maintained skills database and alignment and mapping to resource management processes.

Sometimes resource managers lose sight of actual resources for projects that are less structured because team managers maintain tighter control over how to use their resources. This frequently results in violating a key resource management principle that dictates the transparency of resources to other potential users in the enterprise. Therefore, it is important to retain some way of tracking use of allocated resources using some common definition of supply allocation.

Predicting Demand

Defining the demand side can be more difficult with agile because a customer or a single project commonly determines it. Most IT work is already funded with expectations for a start, middle and end. Agile disrupts this somewhat, as it focuses more on the solution and how to incrementally create the solution to meet the needs of the business.   

Understand, a product backlog is not a project plan. It's essential to force a standard definition of resource demand. This is still project work therefore, we still define the demand in terms of a project. The project may serve many masters such as multiple customers or multiple businesses. As a result, project teams should show some flexibility in defining projects, while making sure to develop a common vocabulary with your delivery stakeholders. This common vocabulary can then be used as part of your forecasting efforts for demand planning.