PMP® – Resource Management Maturity Model

5 Levels in Resource Management Processes

Level 0

No formal process: Resources are allocated at an ad hoc basis, providing no consistency or pattern.  This model is considered to be counterproductive & risky as it does little to ease concerns about the effective utilization of resources.

Level 1

Work Visibility: Organizations have visibility to who is working on what. However, resources are assigned to work without any control or oversight.

Level 2

Controlled assignment: A formal resource assignment approval process is introduced. However, approvals are informed only by resource availability information.  At Level 2, the resource manager can decline resource allocation due to overworking of resources.

Level 3

Governed capacity: The focus shifts to Capacity management and the introduction of project priority considerations requiring more structured governance.  At Level 3, the resource manager becomes a part of project governance structure or committee, a kind of mechanism where the governance committee can make a decision on the choice of projects itself, for example, if enough resources are not available for a project or a project cannot be approved at all.   This reduces risk in project execution by value utilization of scarce resources.

Level 4

Schedule driven availability: The resource assignment approval and capacity management processes are driven by project schedules at the phase level.

Level 5

Granular management: Full task-level project schedule details are used to drive the resource assignment and capacity management processes.

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Maturity Level Dimensions

At each level, there are 7 dimensions which are essentially characteristics of that level.  These are uniform however differ in scope for each level.

Assignment Granularity

This is the level of detail at which resources are assigned to work. The duration may be driven by dates at the project, phase or task-level.

Project Roles

This refers to any standardized and distinct roles played by a resource or group of resources on a given project, such as project manager.

Resource Cost

This is the labor cost of a resource that results from a work assignment. Resource cost may refer to planned cost or to actual cost.

Resource Approval

This is the process of approving the assignment of a resource to work at the particular level of assignment granularity

Capacity Planning

This is the strategic portfolio-level planning process aimed at ensuring that the most important projects are resourced and that resource utilization is optimized within the constraint of aggregate resource capacity.

Governance

This is the decision-making process and organizational body that oversees the resource approval, portfolio prioritization, demand management, and capacity planning business processes for Project Management.

Business Value

This is the key business value that organizations can expect to realize at a given level of maturity.

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