What Is Resource Booking and How Drag and Drop Makes It Effective?

Please Note: This article appeared in saviom and has been published here with permission.

Resource booking is a critical function of project management. Some of the activities, such as juggling members between existing projects or assigning resources to new opportunities before getting rolled off, comes under resource booking.

Before the project kicks off, the project manager estimates the type and quantity of resources required for completing the delivery. This?requisition?goes to the concerned resource manager, who identifies and books appropriate resources on the project. After that, it is the project manager’s job to assign various project members to different tasks.

Due to the rapidly changing nature of the project landscape, managers need to alter?resource allocation?on various activities frequently. It enhances their billable/strategic utilization. It is when the drag and drop capability comes in handy while booking resources to tasks.

This article aims to cover the various steps of resource booking using drag and drop functionality. Before delving deep, let’s get the basics right and begin with the definition.

1.?What is Resource Booking?

It refers to identifying and assigning resources to projects or tasks efficiently for a specific time. Since resources can be either fully or partially available, managers must consider their availability before booking them to projects tasks. It is also necessary for the managers to ensure that the resources are neither overloaded nor?underutilized.

2.?Challenges of Resource Booking using Spreadsheets

The market is flooded with a plethora of modern solutions to assign resources to projects efficiently. Yet, many organizations still rely on legacy tools like spreadsheets to book resources on projects. These tools have their limitations and fail to overcome market uncertainties and globalization. Here’s how:

1. Prone to errors:

Spreadsheets are time-consuming and cumbersome. They are also susceptible to human errors during reconciliation, creating erroneous data and a spiraling effect on resource analysis.

According to?MarketWatch,?“88% of spreadsheets contain some form of errors”

2. Creates siloed data:

Spreadsheets fail to provide enterprise-wide resource visibility. So, it’s hard to identify and assign the?right resources to projects?at the right time and cost. Subsequently, delivering projects on time and within budget becomes challenging.

3. Unable to provide real-time data:

Spreadsheets are unable to consolidate data on a single platform. As a result, discrepancies and redundancy can lead to double booking of resources. In the absence of?real-time information, decision-makers cannot make timely decisions to improve the organization’s health index.

4. Difficult to maintain:

Though spreadsheets are easy to develop, they are somewhat helpful to meet initial business requirements only. But as the business expands and changes, spreadsheets fail to meet its current and future needs.

5. Cannot respond to dynamic market conditions:

Spreadsheets lack the functionalities to respond to evolving demands. These tools cannot help determine if a new project can be accommodated within existing constraints, resulting in lost market opportunities.

The solution to these problems is replacing spreadsheets with multi-dimensional?resource booking software. Using this tool, one can book resources quickly and effortlessly with an easy drag and drop functionality. Let’s understand the benefits of using Drag and Drop functionality in resource booking.

3.?Advantages of Drag and Drop Resource Booking

As the name suggests, this feature of resource booking software is a fast and efficient way to plan schedules, meetings, project timelines, and resources.

1. Simple and easy to use:

One of the main attractions of drag and drop resource booking is its simplicity. In just a matter of 2 clicks, one can book resources on tasks or projects, proving to be a time-saver for managers. Besides, with no learning curve involved, one can start?planning?and booking resources straight away. The drag and drop feature is also instrumental in enabling agile resource booking in real-time.

2. Visually easy to comprehend:

Drag and drop capabilities enable you to see changes instantly and provide a?quick overview. Due to the visual changes, all relevant parties can see the updates in real-time. It means that everyone is on the same page, and there is no confusion about missed deadlines or scheduled meetings. It saves you from the hassle of spreadsheet reconciliation and double booking errors.

3. Instant alert during resource overload:

In matrix organizations with resources working on different projects and having multiple reporting lines, losing track of resource capacity is easy. As a result, double bookings resulting in resource overloading are inevitable. Resource booking software consolidates and tracks resource-related information in real-time. So, as soon as there is a resource overload caused by a new booking or editing an existing one, the user gets instantly notified. The user can also view the exact hours of overload in hours on the schedule chart and reassign accordingly.

4. Keeps work organized:

Unlike spreadsheets, drag and drop resource booking software eliminates the endless loop of emails and ensures that any relevant information isn’t lost. While juggling?multiple resource?bookings, one can easily zoom in on a particular booking daily or weekly and simultaneously zoom out to track resource engagement over the next quarter, six months, or year. By consolidating all bookings on a single resource plan, managers can easily track project progress, and your team knows what tasks they need to accomplish.

5. Make changes to bookings effortlessly:

Often, when there is a sudden ramp-up activity, finding resources at the right time may not be feasible. Using?resource optimization?techniques such as?resource leveling?or smoothing, managers can kick start new projects. Using the drag and drop feature on the resource booking software, making edits to existing bookings becomes effortless and quick. You can also gauge the impact of these changes on other bookings and make modifications accordingly.

4.?Best Practices of Resource Booking

Listed below are some of the best practices of?booking resources on projects. Depending on the situation and requirement, one can apply the ideal resource booking practice.

1. Simple Booking:

This type of booking entails assigning a resource to a single project. One can select the appropriate dimension on the schedule chart and book a specific resource on a project using the drag and drop functionality. Depending on the project’s duration, managers can apply suitable timescales like daily, monthly, quarterly, or yearly to book a resource for a specific timeline. Using a few clicks, one can define booking details such as project, task, start and end date, effort, role, etc.

2. Split Booking:

Overallocation?causes employee burnout, compromised work quality, and eventually leads to turnover. Therefore, managers must avoid constantly overloading resources with work. If a resource gets overloaded with work, a warning message alerts the concerned manager. He/she can split their bookings accordingly to optimize and avoid the overallocation. Also, sometimes resources go on vacations or suddenly leave the organization in the middle of the project. To avoid project delays due to their unavailability, managers can split their bookings and reassign them to other available resources.

3. Bulk Booking:

In the event of sudden ramp-up activities within a project, an influx of multiple resources is the need of the hour. If managers have to identify and allocate numerous resources to tasks, it can be painstakingly time-consuming. Bulk booking can simplify the process by?assigning?several resources to a project in one go. Using suitable filters, managers can select appropriate resources based on their skills, role, location, and more across the enterprise and book them in to a project in just a few clicks. In the dynamic project management landscape, this practice can be a saving grace.

4. Reoccurrence Booking:

If a booking needs to repeat later, then re-occurrence booking is practical. In this case, managers need not create a new booking and simply repeat the booking with just a click-of-a-button. One can also specify the frequency of reoccurrence booking, be it daily/weekly/monthly/yearly, and set the number of times the activity needs to repeat. This best practice of resource booking saves time and ensures that for a frequently recurring booking, managers don’t end up missing any occurrence.

5. Generic Resource Booking:

This type of resource booking helps fulfill future project demands. Once a project reaches the opportunity or approval sales?pipeline?stage, managers can start planning. As these projects are yet to start, managers can book generic resources first. Once confirmed, managers can reassign these dummy resource bookings to named resources within the enterprise that match the qualification criteria.

6. Bulk Update:

Imagine the following scenarios:

i) A single project with multiple resources already assigned to it gets delayed.

ii) Or, a single resource booked on various projects suddenly goes on leave.

iii) Due to a sudden high-priority project, the entire team has to shift their bookings to a later date range.

For all of these scenarios, editing the bookings one by one can be arduous and time-consuming. In such cases, bulk update, wherein multiple bookings can be revised and updated, is valuable. It simplifies the process significantly, and with just a few clicks, managers can adjust bulk bookings.

7. Bulk Copy Resource:

Sometimes, a new project has a similar structure to a previous one. In such cases, a bulk copy of resource bookings of one project can be duplicated on another project effortlessly, without involving the hassles of creating new bookings from scratch.?The project manager can directly copy all the bookings of the previous project?into the new one in bulk?instead of assigning them individually.

8. Bulk Copy by Role:

This best practice of resource booking is ideal for future and pipeline projects which require similar roles to that of a running project. For such a project, managers can avoid creating individual resource bookings and generate a bulk copy of resource bookings by role. Once copied, they can simply replace real names with generic ones. When the project probability is confirmed, managers can reassign those dummy bookings to existing resources having the same role and other desired qualifications.

5.?Conclusion

To sum up, resource booking using easy drag and drop has revolutionized the way managers conduct project resource planning. Its simplicity and ease of use have made agile resource planning efficient and precise, enabling successful delivery of projects within time and budget. So, it’s high time for businesses still using legacy tools like spreadsheets for resource booking to invest in modern resource management software. Real-time resource booking capabilities help organizations enhance?profitable utilization?and complete more projects with fewer resources.

6.?The Glossary

7.?Saviom Solution

SAVIOM is the market leader in offering the most powerful and configurable solution for?managing your enterprise resources?effectively and efficiently. With over 20 years of experience, this Australian-based MNC has created its global presence across 50 countries and helped more than 100 customers achieve their business goals. SAVIOM also has products for project portfolio management, professional service automation, and?workforce planning software?that is customizable as per business requirements.