Plan for Project Resources

Defining project resources (labor, machinery/equipment, materials, and methods) and quantities needed to perform project activities builds on the initial estimates and provides additional information that can be applied to expand the WBS used to manage the project.

The top-level WBS developed earlier as an estimation mechanism is typically expanded by decomposing these top levels into work packages that represent singular work units that can be separately assigned, performed, and tracked. This subdivision is done to distribute management responsibility and provide better management control. Each work package or work product in the WBS should be assigned a unique identifier (e.g., number) to permit tracking. A WBS may be based on requirements, activities, work products, or a combination of these items. A dictionary that describes the work for each work package in the WBS should accompany the work breakdown structure.

• Determine process requirements. The processes used to manage a project must be identified, defined, and coordinated with all the relevant stakeholders to ensure efficient operations during project execution.
• Determine staffing requirements. The staffing of a project depends on the decomposition of the project requirements into tasks, roles, and responsibilities for accomplishing the project requirements as laid out within the work packages of the WBS. Staffing requirements must consider the knowledge and skills required for each of the identified positions, as defined in the Plan for Needed Knowledge and Skills specific practice.
• Determine facilities, equipment, and component requirements. Most projects are unique in some sense and require some set of unique assets to accomplish the objectives of the project. The determination and acquisition of these assets in a timely manner are crucial to project success. Lead-time items need to be identified early to determine how they will be addressed. Even when the required assets are not unique, compiling a list of all of the facilities, equipment, and parts (e.g., number of computers for the personnel working on the project, software applications, office space, etc.) provides insight into aspects of the scope of an effort that are often overlooked.