7.1.1 Resources and limitations

Hi, aldocera and congratulations on your first post!

The tool is really dependent upon what you're looking for, but creating one in Excel should be easy for you to do.

The reason I say it is really depends is it will be based on what you're using it for.

I've used it for strategic planning - capturing all of our organization's projects and metrics and showing the resources needed from each area. This gave a visual way of identifying time periods when it would be impossible to implement initiatives due to limited resources.

Another way I've calculated resources is a departmental level. I consider how long a task takes, how many times is is done and how many times is needs to be done, how much time my current staffing allocates on the task. This will allow me to see the gap between current state and what I need.

 

There are many resources for Excel. I have been searching and using them for years to make my tools with. Smartsheet is one nice looking source. They show how to make a Gantt chart here. You don't mention which resources you are concerned with.

Let us suppose you are concerned with personnel resources. If you put people's names in along with Task Name, you can visually detect if people are being overloaded, and decide if reallocating responsibilities is a good idea.

Chandoo has some nice looking resources too. I am tempted to buy their Project Management Excel Templates package and try it out for myself.

I am not affiliated with Smartsheet or Chandoo.