Do resource management processes look inconsistent across your organization? This is a common problem! Here's how to bring everyone into alignment.
Let’s admit it, not all service lines in your organization are as mature in their resource management processes as the other departments.
And this varying resource maturity? Well, it can snowball into inconsistent delivery standards, bottlenecks in cross-functional collaboration, and inefficient resource allocation.
Not to mention, varying resource maturity levels across service lines mean you have different budget and capacity forecasts, leading to planning fallacy and poor risk management.
We bet you already know that, though. It’s why you’re here in the first place, right? In fact, in our LEAP webinar series, how to achieve cross-departmental Resource Management (RM) maturity is one of the questions that resource and operations managers ask time and again. It's clearly a concern for a lot of organizations – you're not alone.
So we created this 5-step blueprint to help you bridge the resource maturity gap in your organization. It brings you tactical insights that you can use to create a personalized, unique-to-your-company plan.
Before we begin, note that top-down initiatives planned by resource/operation managers alone won’t get you far.
So throughout, be sure to bring departmental leads into the improvement process to unlock RM maturity across different service lines.
With that, here’s what you need to do:
Beginning with understanding your end goal helps you plan for that end. The very starting point here? Dive into the broader business context.
Ask yourself: Are individual functions or service lines highly dependent on each other, or do they operate fairly autonomously?
If coordination between functions is essential, you’ll benefit from a centralized Resource Management Office (RMO).
If each line works independently – serving different clients or markets – not sharing resources or delivery goals, allow for variation in resource management (hybrid approach).
That said, if your organization is in flux, you’ll want to gradually align all service lines. This way, you can allow for tailored change management without disrupting well-oiled workflows.
In short, once you’ve a clear understanding of your goal, you can work backward to achieve a custom level of resource management maturity that is purposeful and meets your operational needs best.
Keep reading: 7 Steps to Identifying Your Organization’s Resource Management Maturity Level ➡️
Whether you settle on a centralized or hybrid resource management approach, you need at least some level of standardization to improve visibility, scalability, and cross-team collaboration while ensuring all service lines retain autonomy.
These steps help you build a standardization process that delivers the best benefits:
By improving visibility into resource and project data, a shared framework reduces duplicate work and helps you better manage risks.
To build such a framework, you’ll want to:
Next, define core processes such as role definitions, capacity planning, and demand forecasting that every function follows.
From there, agree to a set of common standards. These don’t have to be perfect the first time around though. But a minimum viable version can get you going – iterate from there, as needed.
One last thing here, make sure you roll out the shared framework in phases so you’re managing change appropriately. This also allows you to test how receptive teams are to the change, so you can implement changes accordingly.
A shared employee skills inventory is a resource bank capturing everyone’s skills, interests, and availability. It’s essentially a resource maturity asset you can’t do without.
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Serving as a centralized bank of employee skills, it facilitates better resource sharing (reducing resource clashes), upskilling opportunities, and allows for accurate capacity forecasting.
What’s more, using a unified skills inventory, team leads can assign resources to projects that are a better fit for their skills.
Dig deeper: How to Do Resource Forecasting - A Complete Guide ➡️
Just-in-time (JIT) resourcing involves allocating resources per needs as they arise instead of relying on traditional workforce planning based on long-term forecasts.
Since JIT resourcing is proactive and flexible by nature, it reduces idle time and aligns talent supply to real-time demand.
As mentioned in the step above, a skills inventory is an essential resource maturity asset. But throwing in a list of employees with their skills only gets you halfway to realizing your inventory’s full potential – hence, this dedicated step to building a more sophisticated version.
So, how can you reap the best benefits of a skills inventory? Follow these three tips:
Common skills in your inventory assist in identifying transferable talent across departments/teams while supporting consistent resource tracking.
Make sure the skills you add here are broadly applicable across common tasks such as communication, project management, and stakeholder alignment.
Also, don’t forget to define and implement a core skills taxonomy to get this part of your skills inventory right.
Within the broader inventory, create tailored groups for specialized skills for different service lines, capturing domain-specific capabilities that show in the shared list.
For instance, specialized skills for the legal service line could include skills like regulatory compliance and cloud architecture for the IT department.
Make sure you work with each service line’s head to create detailed mini skills groupings relevant to their function.
Yet another must-follow tip here? Regularly review these skills groups to make sure they reflect evolving work so your skills inventory and its functional groupings are relevant and up to date for use all the time.
Some functions may need to classify group skills differently to support their unique workflows.
To meet that need, use flexible tooling that supports customized categorizations while still showing all skills in a centralized view for leadership.
Here again, work with functional heads, supporting them in creating their unique skill banks, customized by tags or skill bundlings – depending on their workflow’s requirement.
Roll out improvements stepwise – slowly and in alignment with other stakeholders so you’re respecting each department’s starting point, capacity for change, and functional context.
To this end, take the following action steps:
This assessment shows where each service line is in terms of its resource planning, governance, tools, and mindsets. In turn, helping you work out solutions and implement changes based on where individual functions are.
Begin with a structured evaluation that uncovers each service line’s current practices, resource management challenges, and processes. Conduct both interviews and surveys to identify gaps. Go on a listening tour.
Further reading: Here's our advice on How to Assess Your Resource Management Maturity Level ➡️
Even if you’re aiming to centralize resource management, a one-size-fits-all rollout won’t help.
Each team has different levels of readiness, needs, and challenges, which makes tailored plans essential for successful implementation. Make sure your plan for each function is tailored to their resource maturity level – custom to their tool and adoption speed.
Here, translate findings from your maturity assessments into line-specific roadmaps with defined owners, clear goals, implementation steps, and timelines.
Make sure you consider tolerance for transformation in these line-specific rollout plans. Forcing too many changes too quickly can easily lead to resistance to them. So make sure you’re engaging stakeholders early on and have training and support resources ready for each step of the way.
Trying to roll out every change all at once is the recipe for stretching resources thin and diluting focus. The solution then is a strategic roll-out plan focusing on key areas for change.
Create your implementation plan based on key factors like impact, feasibility, and appetite for change. Decide whether to proceed with changes in one service line or across all at one time.
Also, use a prioritization framework like efforts versus impact to identify which lines or changes you need to be addressing first. Phase in implementation accordingly.
Last but not the least, unlocking sustained progress and maturity in resource management heavily depends on ongoing support from senior leadership.
You need the C-suite’s backing for allocating budget, signaling resource management maturity as a business priority, and driving accountability.
Now to get active support from executives:
Link the changes to business goals and explain how they’d drive outcomes like profitability, delivery performance, and/or efficiency.
Here’s a detailed 5-step plan for getting buy-in for resource management initiatives from your leadership.
Use metrics like project delays, resource utilization, forecasting accuracy and/or skills mismatches to gather concrete data and make the case for achieving resource maturity.
Dig deeper: All the Data You Need to Do Resource Management Process (A Practical Guide) ➡️
Empower cross-functional team leads to co-own solutions, rather than making resource maturity a top-down initiative.
Involve everyone — from service line heads to RMO leaders — to regularly share challenges, insights, and progress. In fact, when it comes to sharing progress made and response to the changes with leadership, always overcommunicate.
Remember, effective resource management plans sit on a comprehensive review of your organization’s maturity level and an understanding of how well each service line is ready for change.
From there, work with departmental leads to sketch out a continuous improvement plan, including a plan to manage change.
