Project Management Paper

A resource characterizes an economic or productive factor needed to attain a goal or a means to start an enterprise and achieve an intended outcome. Resource constraints are factors that hinder an ongoing project or a system from reaching its full potentials in respect to its goals. They relate to the lack of sufficient resources, which can cause parallel actions to be performed in a sequence (The Pennsylvania State University, n.d.). Project resources include laborers, working capital, and equipment, among others. If resources are not available in abundance, then the rate of completion of an ongoing project decreases.

The major negative effects of resource constraints are creation of sub-standard projects and over utilization of the available resources. For example, if the human resource in a project is inadequate, laborers might be pushed to do more work in a bid to meet deadlines. This translates into low quality work being performed on a project. Managers can also use the limited financial resource available in trying to find alternatives ways to complete the project. If laborers are insufficient, a manager may use a project’s working capital to hire expensive building equipment for a project.

Completion delay of a project is the principal impact of a resource constrained project. This means that the desired deadline of a project is not achieved. This could be detrimental to the profitability of an organization. Project managers might anticipate using a completed project to attract potential clients at a certain future period. If the project is delayed due to the lack of resources, the organization involved may lose out in attaining the new clients. This could be a serious setback in attaining maximum profitability levels in an organization.

In order for a project manager to understand the potential problems likely to emerge, he should have a planned project and resource leveling schedules. The resource leveling process ensures that a project’s resource demand cannot exceed the available resources. It ensures that there is no over-allocation of resources on a single task (Dominguez, 2013). The schedule outlines the possible problems likely to emerge on a project, as well as their remedies. This way a manager can identify a project problem and control it before it causes much damage.

To alleviate the problems of resource constraints, comprehensive planning should always be done before commencing a project. “Project planning is considered to be the heart of a project’s life-cycle” (Barron, Barron, 2009). A project handler is able to determine his project necessities through the use of a good plan. He can also create a resource usage plan and formulate the project’s expenditures.  

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