Human Resource Plan

Purpose

The human resource plan, in its many forms and formats, provides an understanding of when and how team members will be applied to the project and to what degree. A natural extension of the project plan, the human resource plan defines what resources are required to achieve the project goals.

Application

The human resources plan is used on a variety of levels. For senior management, it identifies all of the resources that have been delegated to a given project and the degree to which they will be working on that effort. For the project manager, it provides pinpoint information on which resources are working on which tasks. For the team members, it affords them the ability to know what they will be working on, for how long, and with whom.

Content

The human resources plan includes either the names or the skill sets of the resources assigned to the project and the degree to which they will be used. Normally, this information is juxtaposed with the activity list or the work breakdown structure. In either case, it is ideal when the list (and concurrent resource usage) can be condensed into summary levels for management review and then broken out into extensive project detail for team member application. The chart should incorporate the resource, the time and degree of usage, and the task or areas to which the resource is being applied.

Approaches

The human resources plan can take on a variety of forms, including resource histograms (either team or individual), line charts, or spreadsheets with allocations over time. Each approach has its advantages. The resource histogram, such as that shown in Figure 4.4, provides a simple, one-resource perspective on task loading. If an individual is loaded at a level greater than 100% of its availability, it is highlighted on this chart.

Human resource plans may also be reflected by name, hour, and responsibility in resource spreadsheets. Regardless of the choice of the display tool, the human resources plan should reflect when team members will be deployed on tasks and the degree to which they will be applied.

Considerations

The human resources plan, while seemingly innocuous, can actually become a source for controversy, because it involves individuals and how and when their time will be applied. Also, in some environments, the more detail that is provided on resource utilization, the more upper management will micromanage the effort. For this reason, summary views (rather than task-by-task views) are often desirable when presenting the human resource plan to senior management.