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By Joe Weller | May 21, 2018
Resource planning is an ordinary activity with an extraordinary ability to transform a project from idea to action, and it is essential to projects across all industries. In this article, you’ll learn more about the concept of resource planning, and also find free, downloadable templates available in Microsoft Word, Excel, and PDF formats for scheduling staff, allocating IT project resources, planning Agile sprints, and more.
Agile Resource Planning Template
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Try Smartsheet Template This resource capacity planning template includes a Gantt chart feature to visualize and plan resources for Agile software project sprints. Use this template to chart software development resources by quantity and skill type (for example, PMs, analysts, developers, designers, product managers, administrators, etc.). Modify the template to view the distribution of your team’s time and activities across your Agile sprint calendar (expressed in two week intervals here).
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Project Resource Planning Template
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Use this project resource planning template for multiple types of project and portfolio management scenarios. Schedule human resources and non-human resources (like material and equipment) in separate sections for easy analysis based on each project phase, from project origination to execution. Plan and estimate cost for full-time employees, freelance consultants, contingent staffing, software, hardware, and more.
Staff Resources Planning Template
Download Staff Resources Planning Template – Excel
Resource management involves assigning tasks, roles, and responsibilities to your project teams to clarify process and participation. This resource planning template provides histogram featureto visualize and plan project activity and create an optimized project schedule based on staff resources.
Team Resource Planning Template
Download Team Resource Planning Template – Excel
Use this template to forecast your project team’s bandwidth (expressed as work hours) using a heatmap visualization. Customize the template to reflect your team’s availability based on resource allocation of work hours. This is a resource utilization tool designed to help you plan and manage your team’s demand and quickly populate data based on project hours allocated and utilized.
Human Resource Planning Template
Download Human Resource Planning Template – Excel
A resource allocation template provides an overview of the human resource demand (expressed as work hours) a project requires. This template features a pivot table function to quickly determine changes based on pending and active project activity by work hours/person assigned. Customize the jobs and activities to match your human resource needs.
IT Resource Planning Template
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This text-based template presents resource plans common to information technology projects such as ERP installations, hardware upgrades, or application development. Move beyond internal spreadsheets and edit this IT resource plan to earn approval for project proposals or to fund product development. The template is designed for formal presentation of IT resource planning so you can modify it as a formal business plan document.
What Is a Resource Plan?
Resource planning is a tactical project management activity in which you plan for supply (resources including people, materials, equipment, and finances) and demand (the tasks and work to accomplish). As a standalone planning tool, a resource plan can organize data on labor and material cost for project budgets, estimate consumption of resources, schedule employee time, plan daily staffing levels, and aid in workforce planning. Project management offices, manufacturers, marketing agencies, staffing firms, IT consultants, and software developers use resource planning to manage supply and demand to complete projects.
What to Cover in the Resource Plan
A resource plan is primarily an internal document and tool. However, sometimes you present the plan to an external audience as a component of a business plan or a portfolio management document. You will determine the information to include in your resource plan based on the audience and the document’s purpose. For example, you may be creating “what if” scenarios to track the availability of skilled labor across different teams or writing a staff schedule. Resource plans vary in purpose and the content, but there is a common framework for information they cover:
- Project name
- Plan version
- Plan history
- Project dates
- Project tasks or deliverables
- Monthly calendar
- Resource names
- Job titles
- Job locations
- Skill level or expertise
- Roles and responsibilities
- Type of resource
- Quantity of resource
- Work hours
- Salaries or wages
- Budget estimates
- Work in progress
- Resource requirements
- Demand assumptions (lost time)
- Approval signatures
- Glossary of terms
- References and appendix
Easily Track Resource Planning Templates with Smartsheet for Project Management
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With Resource Management by Smartsheet, you can more easily build the best team for a project, keep project schedules and budgets on track, and confidently forecast business needs.
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