The term Resource Utilization refers to using the available resources. It measures the utilization of all the available resources. It describes the percentage of an employee’s availability and capacity. Furthermore, it is used to determine how much time your team spends doing a billable task and how productive each team member is. The best resource that a company has at any given time is its project team. Suppose the project team is productive and all the human resources are used properly and nicely. In that case, the organization will build a better reputation and win more and more projects.
A resource is anything that is required to complete a project. It could be tangible or non-tangible, living or non-living. The non-living resources include materials, equipment, tools, and other things, whereas the living resources refer to humans.
Human resources are the most valuable yet useful resources a company has at any given time. The material resources are not enough to accomplish a certain task in the project development process. So, using the available material or non-material resources efficiently and effectively is called resource utilization.
The resource utilization planning is done during the project planning phase, and it is decided which resource will be allocated to which task. The project managers and other leaders should take this decision wisely.
Resource utilization rate is the simplest metric to keep track of your team’s productivity. This rate for each resource should be balanced. If an employee is working more than his capacity, he is overutilized. Similarly, if a client is working less than his working capacity, he is underutilized. The project manager has to balance both to avoid the under allocation or the overallocation of any resource.
Benefits of Resource Utilization
Resource utilization serves many benefits, some of which are as follows:
- It is a key to staying productive in your project.
- It makes the development process more transparent to identify the risks before they grow into problems.
- Helps in identifying the overused or underused resources.
- It helps you in managing your project more agilely.
Calculating the Resource Utilization
The formula that you can use to calculate your resource utilization is as follows:
Resource utilization = busy-time/available-time
While calculating the resource utilization, you should keep in mind the holidays or the scheduled leaves of your employees to have more accurate calculations. You can also convert this formula into a percentage:
Resource utilization = (busy-time/available-time) * 100
Tips for Better Resource Utilization
Here are some tips that you can use:
- Leverage the visibility of your resources to better utilize them in all of your projects rather than in one project.
- Keep track of the scope of your project and try to avoid scope creep. It is best to have project management software that brings up the scheduled tasks, processes, and timelines to allocate your resources better.
- Adjust your team workload by dividing bigger tasks into smaller ones and assigning them to underutilized resources.
- To know the actual progress of your project, define a baseline and repeatedly compare the project metrics with that baseline.
- Always be ready for unexpected changes. Have a well-defined risk assessment method to overcome any problems during the project development process. The unexpected changes may affect the performance of your resources.