Resource management maturity models can help you understand where you're starting from. But how can you tell where you are on the scale? Let's explain.
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The first step to building better processes for the future is to take stock of how things work right now.
And in the field of resource management, this means evaluating how refined and developed the whole resource management ecosystem is in your business.
But when you’re in the weeds and dealing with the particulars of your workflows and processes day-to-day, it can be difficult to step back and take an objective view.
This is where it can be useful to look at industry frameworks that help you parse out what mature, refined resource management processes should look like.
From formal frameworks like the Resource Management Institute (RMI) model to Runn’s approachable guide to resource management maturity, these models help you understand the characteristics of an evolving resource management practice.
But if you’ve been tasked with evaluating your RM maturity, you’re probably wondering how to start applying these maturity models to your context.
What questions should you ask? Who do you need to speak with? What processes should you examine?
In this article, we’ll walk you through the process of gathering the information you need to assess your RM maturity, and signpost you towards your next steps to elevate your RM maturity to the next level.
Resource management maturity is a reflection of how well your organization manages its resources, to achieve optimal utilization, performance, and efficiency.
It assesses your resource management practices based on a range of factors – including resource scheduling practices, processes and governance, tools and technology, strategic alignment, and more.
This determines whether your organization is high performer – engaged in strategic resource management and best practices, and reaping the efficiency benefits - or whether your organization is still at a more rudimentary stage, with scope to iterate and improve your practices.
The industry-standard tool for assessing resource management maturity is the Resource Management Institute’s Resource Management Maturity Model. However, this is a proprietary tool, available to RMI members only. So you may like to use Runn’s own interpretation of the resource management maturity levels for your assessment.
Discover more about resource management maturity in our guide: Raising the Bar: A Guide to Resource Management Maturity ➡️
Simply put, higher resource management maturity is associated with higher performance.
The benefits of resource management maturity include higher efficiency and agility, cost savings, risk reduction, streamlined business operations, higher employee engagement, and happier clients.
As a result, professional service firms have a competitive edge, as the right people, projects, and schedules combine to create maximum impact.
But to achieve a higher level of resource management maturity, you first need to know where your organization currently stands.
A resource management maturity model helps you understand how your practices compare to others in the market. It identifies your position on a scale of 1 to 5 and provides a clear framework to level up your resource management processes – helping you unlock higher efficiency and strategic impact.
But where do you start?
To assess your resource management maturity, you’re going to have to don your best detective gear and get curious. You’ll need to meet with the right people and ask the right questions – to build a holistic understanding of how your organization performs across the key areas of the resource management maturity model.
Resource management maturity models typically consider your practices in key areas like:
Follow our guided research process below and you’ll uncover the answers you need to confidently position your organization on a resource management maturity model – and uncover practical strategies to progress to higher levels of performance.
The first step is to find out who you need to talk to and where they sit in the business. Look at your organizational structure to understand your resource management model.
Is there a designated lead for resource management in your company – such as a director of a designated Resource Management Office? If so, this suggests resource management is viewed as a strategic business function and is an indicator of high resource management maturity.
If not, who is responsible for allocating resources? Do you have resource managers distributed around the business? Or is it managed by individual team or project leads? Make note to talk to them about the resource scheduling process.
You’ll also need to talk to people that aren’t directly involved in resource allocation.
Then, you need to go on a listening tour – asking questions and digging into perceptions of resource management in your organization.
Here’s your list of people to speak to:
Whoever is responsible for allocating resources – Whether allocations are managed by distributed project managers, departmental resource managers, or a centralized resource management function, this is where you’ll get insights into resource management processes and practice.
Senior management – Be sure to speak to the leadership team and understand their view of resource management in the business. Do they see it as a strategic or operational function? What do they think works… and doesn’t?
Sales team – The sales team is integral to efficient resource management. They should be aware of capacity, availability, and skills before onboarding new projects. But that isn’t always the case. It’s important to speak to them and understand their processes and KPIs.
Resources – You can also get valuable insights from the resources being managed – the team members on the frontline of project delivery. They’ll know better than anyone what works and what doesn’t in your current allocation practices.
Now you know who to talk to, you can work through the steps below to build a better understanding of how resource management works in your business.
Next, review how projects are brought into the organization and prioritized.
In some organizations, projects are sold by a sales department, involving minimal communication with the delivery team, and little understanding of their constraints and current capacity. This means that you can end up with a pipeline of projects that you don’t have adequate capacity to take on.
As a result, there’s a lot of project and resource risk – resulting in potential delays, poor resource allocations, last-minute hiring, or disappointed clients.
Furthermore, if projects are allocated on a first-come-first-served basis rather than prioritized according to their strategic value to the business, this results in low-value projects getting priority over more strategic initiatives - simply because they were booked in first.
But in more mature organizations, the sales team has full visibility into future capacity and skills availability, so they understand which projects are viable within particular timeframes.
They also have collaborative KPIs that reflect the wider goals of the organization – such as number of projects delivered to scope, schedule and budget – rather than just quantity or revenue-based. And projects go through a prioritization process to ensure high-value projects get resource priority.
Sales team, delivery team, and project managers.
Whether your sales and operational teams can collaborate to create a feasible, strategically aligned project pipeline – one that meets the needs of the business and client demand, without causing downstream delivery issues.
Next, identify how resource assignments are decided and explore the stages of the resource planning process in your business.
There are many factors you need to look at here.
An example of lower resource management maturity here would be resource allocations handled directly by individual project managers. They select resources from their immediate team. And don’t have access to data or tools to understand capacity, availability, and skills.
In more mature organizations, resource allocation may be handled by dedicated resource managers, who have access to centralized tools and data, and can select the most appropriate resources from the entire organization.
Whoever is responsible for resource allocations – this may be team leaders, project managers, resource managers, or a Resource Management Office
Whether allocations are coordinated, data-informed and strategic – or siloed, ad hoc, and based on limited information.
One measure of the maturity of your resource management is whether you have standardized, documented processes that everyone can refer to. Documented resource management processes ensure clarity, reduce miscommunication, and ensure consistency in how resources are requested and allocated.
However, in less mature organizations, processes may be ad hoc and informal, siloed and unstandardized, or not adhered to at all. This can undermine the many benefits of effective resource management.
Anyone responsible for resource allocations – plus any centralized structure responsible for resource management, such as an RMO.
The extent to which resource management processes are standardized, documented, and followed by everyone involved in resource scheduling, recruitment, etc.
Don’t forget to look at the documents for additional insights into how resource management works in your organization – are they fit-for-purpose? Are they easy to follow?
You also need to understand how your organization defines and tracks employee skills and capabilities.
Skills are fundamental to project success. You need to be able to find and allocate resources based on their ability to do the work well. But lower maturity organizations struggle to collect, store and use this information effectively.
In higher-maturity orgs, there will be a framework for collecting and updating information on every individuals’ skills, skill level, and training - so that people allocating resources can pick the most qualified person for the job.
Top-performing companies go even further by integrating this skills data with resource scheduling tools, to create the ideal scenario - when finding the right people at the right time to work on a project becomes the work of seconds, simply by searching your resource database.
Plus, they track employees’ interests and career aspirations, so they can match individuals with opportunities that engage and develop them, while meeting organizational needs. It’s about achieving your goals by bringing the human story to data.
Whoever is responsible for resource allocations – see above. You may also want to talk to individual resources to ask how well they feel their skills and preferences reflected in work allocations.
Whether your organization strategically captures and uses skills data and career aspirations to improve resource allocation accuracy, client outcomes, and workforce development.
One of the advantages of effective resource management is that talent gaps are obvious in advance.
If you’re short of particular people or skills, you know in good time to start recruiting or upskilling existing staff – avoiding the high costs associated with reactive recruitment. So assessing recruitment and retention practices provides a strong insight into the maturity of your resource management practices.
More mature organizations will use demand and capacity planning to forecast resource needs in advance. This rightsizes the workforce to future needs, ensuring improved project delivery and the capacity to seize market opportunities.
Further reading: What is Strategic Capacity Planning - And How to Improve It ➡️
They’ll also use resource utilization metrics to understand immediate resource constraints to address, such as Java developers being consistently overused and in short supply. They’ll also use organizational-wide visibility into utilization to retrain and redeploy underused staff to high-demand areas, as an alternative to costly layoffs.
Your Human Resources team, senior leadership, plus whoever is responsible for resource allocation.
Whether resource management practices allow for proactive hiring and workforce development strategies – or if they could be improved to ensure HR has more advanced warning of resource needs.
Data and resource management go hand in hand. Effective RM relies on tracking the right data – and using the appropriate tools to assess and act on it.
Metrics like utilization rate, resource capacity, and forecast accuracy provide insights into people, project, and organizational performance – to support strategic planning.
While resource management software supports people to act on that data – whether that’s project managers picking the right people for their projects and simply dragging them into their schedules, or senior leaders making data-informed hiring decisions based on reports and data visualization.
Lower-maturity organizations may still be struggling with spreadsheets, trying to wrangle insights from out-of-date data and manage their allocations manually. While high-performing organizations stream live data and have access to comprehensive metrics – giving them full visibility into organization-wide resourcing data.
Senior leadership, project managers, and resource managers. Your data analytics and IT teams if you have them.
Whether the organization tracks the right metrics to measure and improve resource management effectiveness. And whether your choice of tool supports or hinders your resource management efficacy.
When you’ve gathered your insights, it’s time to put the information to work. Using your chosen resource management maturity framework, pinpoint your maturity level.
Once you’ve identified where you sit on the scale, the resource management maturity model will inform you how to improve. For example:
You should develop an improvement roadmap to help break the process down into manageable steps and get buy-in – for better resource management and for your proposed changes.
But don't feel daunted by this process! We have a ton of guides and articles to help you understand where you should focus your efforts in order to enjoy the most impactful results:
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