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Introduction
This is Charlie Junior. He’s the project manager at
“Buckets of Chocolate,” a family-run business that
his great-great-grandfather started 99 years ago.
They make all kinds of special and magic candy, and
they’re at the top of their game.
Next year is their centennial, and the boss wants to
create a new product to mark the occasion. It’s going
to be the most revolutionary candy item ever made!
But it needs a lot of planning to make sure it doesn’t
turn sour.
Luckily, Charlie here is an expert on activity and
resource planning, and he’s ready to get started.
He’s going to show you what activity and resource
planning is, and why effective planning is essential
for successful projects. He’ll also let you in on a few
secrets to help you plan more effectively. Sweet!
Scene 01 – What is activity and resource planning?
Whatever field you work in, even if it’s a bizarre
chocolate factory, you’ll have project goals. To ensure
those goals are met efficiently, you need a plan.
Charlie loves a good plan! And he knows that getting
activities and resources planned out at the start
will save time and money in the long run. But what
exactly does activity and resource planning involve?
Stage 1 of your activity and resource planning is
identifying, and defining, all the activities involved
in successfully executing the project. In project
management terms, an activity is 1 stage of a project.
Each activity is made up of 1 or more tasks, using 1 or
more resources. And when all the activities are put
together, you get the end product. In most project
management methods, activities have a start date
and a deadline, and defining these is key to making
the project run smoothly.
So, for example, here in the chocolate factory, the
centennial project will include activities like recipe
creation, taste testing, template design, packaging
design, and marketing campaign design. All these
activities involve a number of tasks that lead to the
final product. Once all the activities are defined, it’s
up to the project manager and the stakeholders
to sequence them, create deadlines, and track and
manage them.
The 2nd stage of activity and resource planning deals
with the resources each task needs to successfully
complete each activity. Crucially, this deals with the
most essential commodity your business has: your
people. In this stage, tasks need to be matched
to the right resource at the right time, taking into
account:
• the availability of each resource at any given
point in time
• the performance and expertise of each resource
• the demand for each resource based on current
and future work
• management of resources that will keep
morale high
You might have completed the activity stage of your
plan impeccably, but if you don’t back it up with
great planning at the resource stage, things could
go wrong. Like being short-staffed at a crucial point,
because you missed a crucial resource out. And
sometimes it only takes a small oversight to throw
the whole project off course. Right, Charlie?
Scene 02 – Why effective planning is essential
So, what are the hazards of not conducting activity
and resource planning effectively? Well, effective
planning in these areas helps project managers
utilize resources and time efficiently, and track
capacity, to ensure projects stay on course and on
budget. This makes planning crucial. If you leave out
an activity or resource, or don’t have them ordered
correctly, your planning will come up short, and
could derail the whole project.
When done effectively, your planning can have many
benefits for the project, and your company.
For example:
Better Resource Utilization: A resource that’s sitting
idle with no tasks allocated isn’t earning you money.
Resource planning lets you measure the amount of
time each resource spends on valuable work. This
is your utilization rate. By mapping out resource
availability and performance, you can make sure
that no one’s sitting around with nothing to do,
maximizing their value.
Preventing Overallocation of Tasks: In a factory like
Charlie’s, having all the machines running 100% of
the time would be great! But if he tried to get his
workers going at that pace, pretty soon they’d be
dropping like flies! This would make productivity,
quality, and morale suffer. If you’re always running at
full capacity, then having a single member of staff go
off sick, or take a vacation, could spell disaster for the
whole project. Good resource planning lets you track
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utilization and capacity, helping you quickly identify
areas where new hires might be needed, or where
work can be offloaded to contractors.
Planning your hires: Deciding who to hire is often
based on gut instinct, or on looking for people who’ll
“fit in” with your overall business strategy. Having an
effective resource plan can act as your crystal ball. It
lets you see into the future to decide what availability
you’ll need at any given time during the project.
This removes any uncertainty and prevents potential
wasted resources.
Minimizing dependency: Picture the scene – your
new product range project has reached the
packaging design stage, but all the designers, bar
one, are tied up on other tasks. So, you assign all the
packaging design tasks to a single employee. Then
halfway through the design, that employee goes
off sick. You discover that they haven’t uploaded
their work to your file-sharing network, so whoever
you reassign the task to is going to have to start
over. The whole project grinds to a halt because it
was dependent on one person. Nightmare! This is
called single point failure. Because effective resource
planning maps all the tasks and resource availability,
you can spot these weak points. This allows you to
reassign tasks early, to reduce risk.
Scene 03 – How to create an effective activity and
resource plan
When it comes to activity and resource planning, it’s
easy to see how solid plans will benefit the process.
But how do you go about creating that plan? Well,
Charlie’s asked some of his workers to show you how
it’s done. Click on the workers to find out more.
Step 1: Set up activities. The 1st step is to identify all
the activities that are needed to reach the project
goals. This will also help to inform your resource
planning. For each project, a Project Deliverables
Statement needs to be produced. This needs to
define the project requirements, the milestones
that need to be achieved to successfully complete
them, and the proposed project budget. When you
know these, you can define the activities needed to
reach the target, and the cost per deliverable. This
is the cost of all the component parts. For example,
the chocolate factory centennial project needs to
create a number of deliverables to be successful.
It needs the actual candy bar, the packaging, the
marketing campaign, and the all-important taste
testing and quality control. And these all have a cost.
Consult your project teams and experts to draw up
a detailed activity list, and a detailed list of all the
milestones that need to be met for each activity to
be completed.
Step 2: Define relationships between activities.
Once you have your activity list, you can put all the
activities into a sequence to make the project run as
smoothly and efficiently as possible. Here, you can
identify priority tasks – the jobs that must be done
to reach the project goals. You can also look at how
activity dependencies could affect your project. Is
one task dependent on another being completed?
How would staff absence affect the activities? And
are there any external factors that could interrupt
the tasks being completed, like supplies, or freelance
worker availability?
Step 3: Estimate the duration for activities. With your
activities mapped, you can estimate the time they’ll
take. Getting this right is crucial, as it will inform
how you need to allocate resources. For example,
if a task is expected to take 10 hours, but you only
have 8 hours of a particular resource available, then
you’ll need help. Trying to estimate timings can be
complicated. The best way to work this out is by
using weighted averages based on 3 factors:
• Industry standards
• Expert experience
• Past results
For example, you’ve found the industry standard for
creating a design is 10 hours, but your designer has
said it will take 12 hours. You know from past projects
it has taken around 8 hours. Use all these figures to
come up with an average time, weighted depending
on which figure you trust the most.
Step 4: Estimate the resources. Once you have a full
estimate of timings, you can estimate the resources
you’ll need to complete the project within that time
frame. Make sure you consider things like employee
vacations and availability of external contractors.
Remember to think about employees’ potential to
book leave, too. They might not have any time off
booked at the start of the project, but you need to
be ready, in case they book leave halfway through.
It’s a good idea to have a pool of people on standby,
who know that work could come their way. This way
you can call on them if you suddenly need more
resources. Finally, ensure that employees aren’t
overloaded, or that a crucial activity isn’t relying on
1 resource.
Once you have all these estimates, you can allocate
tasks to resources, and begin to manage and
track progress. Luckily, there are many project
management software programs, designed for each
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project management methodology, to help you do

this.
Summary
The centennial project is well underway at the
chocolate factory. Charlie has created detailed
activity and resource planning and, so far, everything
is running like a dream. Creating detailed plans like
this will not only help you keep projects on budget
and on time, it will help you identify any problem
areas early, so you don’t get any nasty surprises.
By following the 4 steps that Charlie recommends,
you can make your projects flow along as smoothly
as Charlie’s chocolate river! Start by identifying
all the activities the project deliverables required.
Then put them in sequence and decide on their
dependencies. Once you’ve done this, estimate the
duration for each task, activity, and the whole project,
by using weighted averages. And finally, estimate
the resources you’ll need to achieve the project goals
within that time.
With your plan in place, you can allocate tasks,
engage external help, and ensure your project
doesn’t have any slipups. And by using software to
manage and track your activities, you can be certain
all your projects will have the sweet smell of success.