When Skills and Resource Planning Meet

Usually when someone talks about allocating resources on a project, they mean allocating people on projects. But that’s not entirely correct.

In most of the cases they’re allocating skills on projects. Why? Because when you break down the project to phases and activities, you decide what specific skills are required to successfully complete the project. And yes, people are the ones who hold the skills. God, if only those people had one skill each! Just kidding 😊.

It’s a great thing to get on board people having a wider array of skills, especially nowadays when technology is advancing really fast, and companies have to keep up with it. So, when one person has two or three programming skills for instance, and also has work experience with a few tools and frameworks, allocating resources might get a bit challenging. Especially within organizations with a higher number of employees and multiple projects to run at the same time.

Every customer is different and projects are unique. And the requirements can be very specific in terms of technology. That’s why job titles alone are not enough when it comes to allocating people’s skills on projects. This is where elapseit can be of great help due to the connection between the Resource Planner and people’s skills, as it allows you to check not only resources availability, but also skills availability.

You can add as many skills as needed in each employee profile. Check here how to add skills step by step. After they’re added in people profile, you’ll notice there are 4 skills levels to choose from, between 0 and 3. Wait, 0? It doesn’t make sense… Why would anyone add that skill level to someone if they don’t have it, right?! Well, it does make sense actually! While that someone might not have now the skill, it’s in the learning plan because that person needs it to successfully perform the assigned tasks. And once the training is completed you can upgrade the skill to level 1, which is the beginner level.

Once all employees have their skills updated in the tool, it’s quite easy to check their availability. All you need to do is use the skills filter in the resource planner and only people with selected skills will pop up.

Furthermore, there’s a skills matrix in Reports which shows you a list with all your employees and their skills. And you can pick your type of report, either by category or by people.

Not so complicated anymore, right?! 😊