Manage Resources in a Matrix Organization

Description

This best practice offers general guidelines and considerations for managing resources in matrixed organizations. 

Organizing Resources

One of the first elements of effectively managing resources in a matrix environment is to organize resources to meeting customers’ demands. Therefore, Planview recommends that validation of resources be organized in a way that supports the vision and strategic goals of the company. This might involve adjustments to staffing, continual analysis of the skills mix, and a review of the placement of resources within the organization. To support the process of validating the resource organization, Planview recommends the following best practices.

Consider the strategic goals of the company when defining the Planview database, the Organizational Breakdown Structure (OBS).

Conduct yearly reviews of the resource organizational structure to ensure that it still supports strategic goals of the company; include revision of resource placement in the OBS. This might require moving resources within departments or creating new departments.

Regularly review staffing choices, using the best practices outlined in this document.

Perform regular reviews of the resource skill mix within the organization (see best practice “Manage Resource Attributes) to ensure the ability to respond to current and future work.

At a minimum, use alternate resource structures for Skills and Areas of Interest, to support the need to search for and assign resources, as well as the need to forecast resources by skill.