How do you estimate and allocate resources for different project phases and activities?

A project schedule can be very useful as it can help you manage your time. One possibility is to plan some tasks to run at the same time, especially when you are delegating.

In order to gain the buy-in from the teams doing the work, engage Resource Managers or team leads while developing the resource estimates when possible. Also good practice to assign confidence ratings to estimates along your lifecycle. In the very early stages when the scope is vague and req are undefined, it is ok to have a +-30% or even 50% variance associated with your estimates. As you learn more about the deliverables to be produced, you can tighten your confidence! Be sure to look at "actual hours" and spend on similar projects delivered in the past. Using PPM systems helps in these situations since the data is in a centralized database rather than excel files or mpp files on desktops.

Do not forget to round estimates up. People, rent, administration, etc will have to be paid even during delays. A good rule of thumb for first-time projects planned by an experienced project manager is 20% additional resources.

It's very important to consider all estimates as a range, rather than a single number. For example, if you use three-point estimation, a good practice is to save a record of your original pessimistic, optimistic and most likely scenario. That way, you can put the actual number of resources you ended up needing in context with what you originally estimated. For an example of why this matters, sometimes it can *appear* that you missed your estimate because your final number came in different from the one in your final plan. However, if you saved the original range, you may discover that your actual resource requirement was within the range you estimated--it was just closer to your pessimistic scenario.

If you don't want to learn in the most expensive way from your own mistakes, hire a consultant that has been working on similar projects in the past.

Until you master resource planning as an integral part of a project plan. Avoid improvisation as much as possible. Consider each resource and what are the unique characteristics of every individual resource. Don't forget that with the economy today there are some resources that are not readily available. Remember things break during transport. Companies go bankrupt and might not be able to deliver products/services. Consider multiple suppliers when planning. Plan required resources before you estimate the budget for the project and before a contract is drafted and you start negotiation with the client.

Calculating the general welfare of the business on daily basis is the only absolut metric to know the business performance, all other recorses and actions are variable.