Project Resource Prioritization Process: 5 Key Steps

It’s important to think strategically about which resources to assign to specific tasks on your projects. This is where resource prioritization comes in—without it, resources won’t be used to their full potential, which could lead to project delays, extra work or rework, and unclear roles and responsibilities. 

This process, which is usually done via resource management software or resource scheduling tools, involves analyzing your project tasks and available resources and then matching them in an optimal way. I’ll cover how to do it, what tools to use, and some common challenges you might run into along the way.

What Is Resource Prioritization?

Resource prioritization involves ranking tasks or projects based on their importance and allocating resources to those deemed most critical.

This process is also known as capacity planning, workload management, or resource optimization. The goal is to ensure a quality outcome by using available resources in the most efficient and cost-effective way, based on priority order.

When you have limited resources, prioritization helps you maximize productivity and avoid burnout. By assigning more people, money, or equipment to urgent or high-stakes projects and fewer to less critical activities, you can make sure immediate needs are completed first and make the best use of time, skills, equipment, and budget.

Your company may have someone in a resource management role (i.e. a resource manager) with whom project managers work to sort out conflicts and prioritize. They also come in handy with forecasting resources from the beginning and providing an overarching view of all projects to help avoid resource constraints.

How To Prioritize Resources

Resource prioritization helps your team decide which projects and initiatives require the most attention and who should work on what. Here are the steps you’ll need to take to complete this process:

1. Review current project status: Gather updates from team members on project progress, and identify project bottlenecks or tasks causing delays.
2. List tasks and resources: Write down all tasks for each project, including deadlines and dependencies. Then create a list of available resources: team members, tools, budget, and time.
3. Rank tasks by urgency and impact: Determine which tasks are most urgent based on deadlines, and evaluate the impact of each task on project success.
4. Match resources to high-priority tasks: Identify the most effective resource suited for high-priority tasks, and reassign resources from lower-priority tasks to more critical ones.
5. Use visual prioritization: Create a chart, whiteboard list, or spreadsheet to organize priorities, and then color-code tasks (e.g. red for high-priority, yellow for medium, green for low).
6. Communicate priorities to the team: Hold a meeting to explain changes in priorities and resource assignments, and gather feedback to ensure no important tasks or resources are overlooked.
7. Monitor and adjust as needed: Conduct regular check-ins to track progress manually, and reallocate resources if the project demands change or as tasks are completed.

The example below demonstrates how you can manually reprioritize resources to focus on urgent deadlines, make sure other tasks are still completed, and avoid jeopardizing project success.

Example

Your digital agency is juggling two in-progress projects:

1. Ecommerce platform launch: The platform needs final content uploaded and SEO optimization completed.
2. Social media campaign: A campaign promoting the new platform has a looming launch date, but the visuals and ad copy still need to be completed.

 

Here are the steps that you could take:

1. List tasks:
   • Ecommerce platform: Finalize content upload and SEO optimization.
   • Social media campaign: Create visuals, write ad copy, and schedule posts.
2. Rank tasks by priority:
   • The social media campaign is urgent since it directly relates to the platform launch date.
   • SEO tasks for the platform are essential but can be finalized after the campaign launch.
3. Reassign resources:
   • Reassign the content writer from the ecommerce platform tasks to finish the ad copy for the social media campaign.
   • Assign the graphic designer exclusively to social media visuals for the next two days.
4. Create a simple prioritization matrix:
   • In a spreadsheet or task tracking tool, label tasks for the social media campaign as high-priority.
   • Move the SEO tasks to medium priority and address them after campaign launch.
5. Communicate with the team:
   • Hold a team meeting to explain the temporary shift in focus.
   • Get agreement from all team members on the new priorities and align their schedules accordingly.
6. Monitor progress:
   • Check daily to ensure that the visuals and copy for the campaign are completed on time.
   • Once the campaign is ready for launch, reassign resources to complete the SEO tasks before it goes live (and reassign them back to any other relevant projects in progress, if you pulled team members from other projects).

Tools For Resource Prioritization

The right project management tools and resource management and planning software can significantly help resource prioritization. They provide structure and allow all team members and stakeholders visibility into capacity constraints, project prioritization conflicts, and resource overload.

Is the project managing you?

Sign up to get weekly insights, tips, and other helpful content from digital project management experts.

Your email*

This field is hidden when viewing the form

Consent

Yes, I want to sign up to receive regular emails filled with tips, expert insights, and more to build my PM practice.

By submitting you agree to receive occasional emails and acknowledge our Privacy Policy. You can unsubscribe at any time. Protected by reCAPTCHA; Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Email

This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.

Project Management Tools

This includes tools like Jira, Asana, Trello, and Monday.com. 

What they do: 

• Create views for resource priorities on a project or team member level
• Add custom fields or tags to help organize higher-priority tasks
• See critical paths for projects to assist in prioritizing the right projects and tasks

Resource Planning Software

This includes tools like Float, Wrike, Smartsheet, and Resource Guru. 

What they do:

• Allocate and reallocate all types of resources efficiently, with features like drag and drop or auto-alerts when resources are over capacity.
• Customized capacity and workflows for different types of resources on a company level
• Help forecast in-progress and upcoming projects so there are fewer conflicts with resources
• Allow multiple users to work simultaneously, so all project or resource managers are in the know when timelines are adjusted
• Integrate with your existing project management tools to help with prioritization and reviewing and combining metrics and data for decision-making

Best Practices For Prioritizing Resources

Here are my tips for resource prioritization.

Go Beyond Human Resources

Resources don’t always mean just people. When identifying resources available, outline all the resources available, including:

• Time: How much time is required for singular activities, the entire project, and to complete specific tasks?
• Budget: Are you constrained by the funding available for specific activities? Can you charge more to involve more people in the prioritized activity?
• People: Does your team have the skillset required? Can you pull people from other projects to meet a critical need on another?
• Tools: Can a tool help move the activities along more efficiently or support team members in completing their tasks?

Use Visual Prioritization

Create a chart, whiteboard list, or spreadsheet to organize priorities, and color-code tasks (e.g. red for high-priority, yellow for medium, green for low). Project management tools usually let you assign priority via color-coded tags on each task card.

Map Out Your Resources

List all available resources, including team members, software, tools, and budgets. Then, match tasks to resources by comparing needs to availability in the same spreadsheet. Evaluate how each task aligns with strategic goals and immediate needs, and prioritize tasks that have a high return on effort.

Consider Time Constraints

Use a calendar or project timeline to list deadlines for each task, and highlight urgent or fixed deadlines using a color-coding system. Planning backward or via a workback schedule is often skipped, but this is a great old school project management technique. Work from the deadline to the present, identifying concerns like resource overlap or overload on one resource as you go.

Optimize for Cost Efficiency

You don’t want to start moving things around without considering the cost. In many instances, your project budget may have been built with risk and buffer in mind, so you likely have plenty to maneuver around as you’re reprioritizing. 

On the flip side, if you have a limited budget, you may need to obtain more funding from the client or gain approval from internal decision-makers to go over the budget without passing those additional costs on to the client.

Calculate the costs of various options (e.g. time, tools, labor) for each task, and then choose the most efficient option that meets quality standards and the budget you are working with.

Common Challenges

You’ll likely run into conflicts on projects, overlapping deadlines, and resource shortages. You risk delays, exceeding budgets, and overstretching the team if you don’t properly prioritize your resources.

1. Overcommitting Resources

Low-quality work and missed deadlines due to burned out, overcommitted resources create low team morale and high turnover rates. These ambitious expectations are often put on resources due to a lack of proper forecasting and visibility into resource allocation. 

Tips to avoid it:

• Use project management tools to see critical paths and prioritization levels of projects or programs in one view.
• Set clear capacity limits and realistic expectations when scheduling resources in the short-term and long-term.
• Buffer, buffer, buffer! Buffer in project management is a not-so-secret secret. Build it in, always. Never tell anyone how much buffer you have so you can come out on top more often than not.

2. Failing to Reassess Regularly

Once you get into a flow and execution mindset with your project, remember to account for changes to project scope or goals. Continuously assess what needs to be a priority for the team to avoid misaligned priorities, missing time-sensitive tasks, and wasted effort.

Tips to avoid it:

• Schedule regular check-ins.
• Use visuals that the team can review and use to keep themselves on track when priorities change.

3. Ignoring Team Feedback

Team members are in the best position to provide feedback. Listening to feedback allows you and your company to identify themes in what needs to change to improve the process and both team and client satisfaction.

Tips to avoid it:

• Foster open communication and encourage team members to share workload concerns and suggestions. Close the loop with your team on how their input influenced resource adjustments to make them feel heard.
• Use anonymous surveys or team meetings to gather honest feedback on task assignments.
• Act on feedback promptly by redistributing tasks or adding resources to critical areas.

Join For More Resource Management Insights

Want to connect with other digital project managers to share resources and best practices? Join our membership community and get access to 100+ templates, samples, and examples and connect with 100s of other digital project managers in Slack.