How To Conduct A Resource Gap Analysis: 5 Basic Steps

Conducting a resource gap analysis can help you, as the project manager, assess what resources you have committed to current and upcoming work, and what resources you need to run a successful project. 

By understanding what you have and comparing it with what you need, you can plan against any identified gaps to make sure you have the right resources for completing your projects or initiatives on time, on budget, and within the agreed upon scope.

What Is Resource Gap Analysis?

A resource gap analysis is the process of reviewing your available resources and comparing them to the resources you need. This includes project staff and team members, equipment, software, or any other resource needed to complete project work.

It is also important to consider your team’s skills when performing a resource gap analysis. For example, you might need ten full-time team members to fulfill the contract hours requirements next month.

Some projects require both designers and developers; others might need more development resources. You need to understand how many people are required to complete the work and what skills they must have to complete all of the work you’re projecting.

Why Is Resource Gap Analysis Important?

A resource gap analysis is important because it can help you identify any gaps in your resource allocation in both the short-term (what resources you need in the next week or two) or long-term (what resources you will need in the next quarter or within six months).

Here are a few more reasons to conduct resource gap analyses frequently throughout your regular business processes:

• To confirm you have the right resources to complete planned work: Conducting regular resource gap analysis can help you understand whether or not you have the right resources to complete the planned (or projected) work. For example, if you have six website design and development projects scheduled to kick off in the next 3 months, do you have enough designers, developers, and project managers to complete the work?
• To hire the right people at the right time: If you complete a resource gap analysis for projected work (projects you expect to win or begin in the future), you can see who you might need to hire and when they should start. You can also use historical data for benchmarking here, if appropriate. You’ll be able to get insights on how long it takes to hire a mid-level designer as opposed to a senior designer, for example. 
• To budget for upcoming expenses to acquire additional resources: Understanding resource gaps and the budget you need to close them will help you address this before your budget is set in stone (and help you avoid blindsiding the leadership team).
• To balance workloads amongst your team members: While it’s normal for team members to have ebbs and flows in project work, conducting a resource gap analysis and looking at key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics like utilization by person will help you balance work more evenly and avoid overly dramatic ebbs and flows. No one likes to be overbooked for six or more weeks and then ride the bench for a month.
• To predict the resources needed for future work: By doing a resource gap analysis for future work (work you haven’t won yet or which is 6 or more months away), you can be more proactive about filling in the gaps. Have a project scheduled to kick off over the summer? Consider posting any roles or contract needs in the spring so you have time to choose the best person for the job.

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How To Do A Resource Gap Analysis

Here is a step-by-step guide to do a resource gap analysis and understand the data you’ve collected.

1. Assess Team Member Availability

Start by assessing your team members’ availability. This can be as easy as making a spreadsheet with each team member’s name and how many hours they’re available each week. When you do this, remember to account for any vacation or PTO. 

While you may not be able to account for unexpected unavailability, like sick time, bereavement leave, or a project timeline that changed late in the game, this should give you a pretty good idea of your current team’s capacity and availability for project work.

2. Tentatively Assign Team Members

The next step is to tentatively assign team members. If you work for an agency with multiple clients and a number of tentative projects in the pipeline at any given time, this step could get complicated.

Start with the currently contracted work and assign tasks for all team members. You can also assign potential project work (work you haven’t won or that hasn’t been kicked off yet) to see if you need to book more projects or slow down a little bit to avoid overbooking the team. Keep in mind that you’ll have another opportunity to do this later.

3. Identify Gaps

Once the existing work has been assigned out and your current resources are all allocated, look for the gaps. What is the current state of your resource utilization, and how does that compare to your desired state? Are there team members who are overbooked and some who are underutilized?

Once you understand where the gaps are, you can then create an action plan to address them (in the next step of this process).

4. Create A Plan To Fill Gaps

There are two main ways to fill any gaps: balancing workloads among existing team members, or adding more resources (by hiring new team members or borrowing them from other teams). 

• If you need to do load balancing between team members, get the conversation started with team leads or other project managers.
• If you need to address a gap by hiring a new team member, have this conversation with human resources or leadership. Present the gap you’ve identified and the type of resource you need to fill it. 

For example, if you identify a development team shortage for the next year or more, you might need to hire a new full-time developer. But if your analysis shows the resource gap is for a shorter timeframe (e.g. a few weeks to a few months), consider using a contractor (or freelancer) to fill in the gap temporarily.

5. Forecast Resources In Advance For Future Projects

When it comes to forecasting resources for future projects, follow the same steps as your shorter-term resource gap analysis and see what you have and what you need. Take this with a grain of salt—much could change before these projects are initiated.

People could leave the organization, timelines could change, and stakeholders may have other priorities that require resources to be shifted to other areas (e.g. working on a new product or service).

That said, proactively identify gaps and plan to address them. You can use what you learn when analyzing future work to inform any strategic resource planning and help with decision-making.

Tools For Resource Gap Analysis

You can easily use Google Sheets or Excel to create a resource gap analysis template, but there are plenty of project management software and resource scheduling software that you can use while you’re analyzing resource gaps.

If you are concerned that your current processes aren’t efficient or effective for examining your current situation and making sure you can meet client or customer needs, consider using a tool designed specifically for this purpose. You can find some of our favorite resource management software tools below.

1. 1. monday.com — Best for simple workload planning
2. 2. Kantata — Best for real-time resource utilization
3. 3. Scoro — Best for forecasting team utilization
4. 4. Parallax — Best for predictive resource management
5. 5. Float — Best for simple & intuitive project scheduling
6. 6. Runn — Best for real-time project tracking
7. 7. Productive — Best for capacity forecasting
8. 8. Resource Guru — Best for hassle-free resource booking
9. 9. Wrike — Best for scalability
10. 10. Hub Planner — Best for midsize and large companies

Challenges With Resource Gap Analysis

In order to give you a leg up in performing your gap analysis, I’ve rounded up the most common challenges you might encounter and how you can overcome them:

• Lack of organization: If your company doesn’t have centralized project and resource management, it can be hard to start the resource gap analysis process, let alone complete one. Simply pulling a list of all of the resources into a spreadsheet and looking at how they’re allocated daily or weekly will give you a solid start from which to see any gaps and make informed decisions about how to fill them.
• Varying performance levels: Not everyone can perform at 100% (or more) for 100% of the time, so variations in performance levels can also create resource gaps. Team members taking longer than estimated or being out of the office to rest and recharge can have a big impact. 
• Shifts in business strategy: Significant changes to your business’s strategic goals can impact resourcing. For example, if you go from offering only website design and development services to handling website maintenance as well, you will need additional resources with different skills than what already exists on your team. So while “on paper” you may be able to staff all of your projects, the reality may be different because of the difference in competencies needed.
• External factors: Another challenge is external factors that can impact resource constraints. Understanding which external factors can impact current performance (and planned performance) and how this may tie to resource gaps can be challenging for new project managers. For example, a team member might need extended medical leave, a client or stakeholder might ask for a major change to a scope of work or project, or old or unsupported technology can cause disruptions. Things that are out of your control can directly impact project resourcing or cause discrepancies in the resource planning process.

Join Us for More Resourcing Best Practices

If you need a competitive advantage when it comes to resource management, The Digital Project Manager community may be just what you’re looking for. Our templates and tool roundups make it easier for you to do the resource gap analysis you need. And if you get stuck? Our hundreds of active and experienced project managers can share best practices or additional resources.