Perspectives of resource planning
When planning all resources required for a project it is necessary to consider two different perspectives: the first perspective concerns the direct project implementation. This involves the consideration and planning of all necessary resources required by the project team. Unfortunately, in practice it can often be observed that these perspectives are merely considered and nothing more.

The second, at least equally important, perspective is the long-term perspective over the entire life cycle of the product or the change that is developed or effected by the project. If this perspective fails to be acknowledged, a common result is that the project team develops solutions that, whilst sparing the project budget, later cause immense costs in implementation or in operation, with these in turn borne by those affected, as the project team has long since left the scene.

Types of resource
In resource planning it is firstly important for the various types of resource to be differentiated from one another. Although it would be desirable to value all resources fundamentally in financial terms, thus attaining an object comparative yardstick, in practice this is unfortunately not without its problems. A distinction may be made between the following resources:

Human resources
Human resources refer to the availability of the project team members. Where possible, these should be recorded and evaluated with their personnel costs.

Plant and material resources
Plant and material resources are resources that the project team requires in the scope of the project. This begins with the utilisation of meeting rooms, moves on to use of existing plant, test benches or, for example, a laboratory, and ends with the availability of software licences for the project team.

Investments
Investments made in the scope of the project should be fundamentally divided up into investments made for the implementation of the project and investments made by the project team with regard to the life cycle of the solution.

Implementation of resource planning
In practice, resource planning is only considered marginally, before considerably greater energy is applied to schedule planning. However, consistent application of the magic triangle soon indicates that this practice is a dangerous one. In many fields project objectives are consequently only just achieved as far as schedule and result are concerned, with few interested in the cost situation in the final third of the project. However, as the trend is clearly shifting towards increasingly tightly-calculated projects and ever tighter margins, it is apparent that dependable resource planning will be even more important in future than it already is.

Consistent resource planning comprises a complete business plan, typically illustrating all costs and investments for the project to the precise month. With longer project durations in particular this planning is not always possible at a reasonable cost. Instead, a more practical rolling finance planning is used, indicating the respective approaching year on a monthly basis, the second year on a quarterly basis and any subsequent years on a six-monthly basis. In the scope of monthly controlling activity it is then possible to finalise the respective outstanding month. In this manner it is also possible to ensure that planning is reflected upon to a sufficiently frequent extent and that any “ticking time bombs” do not remain unnoticed long enough to develop into a dangerous explosive force.

Cost curve and cost baseline
The cost curve and cost baseline are often useful instruments, particularly where the objective is to maintain an approximate overview. In the case of the cost curve the sum of the monthly planned costs is recorded over the time period. The cost baseline in contrast illustrates the accumulated costs of the project. Both lines are too crude to enable sufficiently accurate planning; however, they enable good controlling for management because deviations between target and actual values can be presented clearly.

Planning of human resources
With regard to the planning of human resources, in addition to the cost aspect it is above all the availability of personnel that needs to be secured. As in many cases the personnel is not disciplinarily subordinate to project management and also often provides only part of its manpower for the project it is essential that regular co-ordination takes place between project and line organisations and that any possible conflict of objectives between line and project is identified in good time.

The planning of resource utilisation for plant, rooms and other facilities of the line organisation is performed analogue to human resources planning or via internal service agreements that also present the cleanest solution from a cost viewpoint, thus ensuring that project costs are not allocated to the line, but rather the project.