Project Prioritization and Resource Management [EN]

What you'll learn

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• Decide which project gets funded using a business case and cost-benefit analysis rather than who asked loudest

• Build a resource matrix and a network diagram, and see the moment two projects need the same person in the same week

• Use OKR as an actual prioritisation mechanism, with the quarterly cycle and an honest score at the end

• Design indicators that get acted on, using critical success factors and impact mapping instead of what was easy to pull

• Calculate capacity in FTE, segment your workforce and run a gap analysis between demand and availability

• Forecast demand with turnover analysis, extrapolation, Delphi and a team competency matrix

• Optimise headcount through combining roles, automation, internal part-time and outsourcing

• Free your own capacity with GTD, time-blocking and six levels of delegation, including RACI

• Learn alongside Mike's 1.6 million students from 185 countries

• Get the author's experience from Preply, Wargaming, iDeals and Alfa-Bank

Who this course is for:

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• Project and programme managers competing with other projects for the same specialists
• PMO analysts building the capacity picture nobody currently has
• Department heads deciding what their team does not do this quarter
• Operations and resource managers balancing demand against availability
• HR business partners planning headcount alongside a delivery plan
• Founders and functional leads whose ambition currently exceeds their people
• Anyone whose projects are late for reasons that have nothing to do with the plan

Description

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This course contains the use of artificial intelligence.

Almost no project is late because the plan was wrong. It is late because the person it depended on was also on two other projects, and nobody was looking at all three at once.

Resource management is the discipline of looking at all three.

Where the capacity disappears

Every project was approved on its own merits by someone reasonable, and the total was never added up. The schedule assumes people are available full time, which none of them are. Priorities exist but they are not ordered, so the sequencing gets decided by whoever follows up most persistently. The indicators were chosen because they were easy to pull rather than because anyone would act on them. And your own week went first, which is why you are reading a plan at eleven at night.

Three levels of the same problem

Thirty-eight lessons across the three levels where capacity is actually decided. The portfolio level first: ten lessons on PMBOK 7, focused on the parts that determine demand — the business case and cost-benefit analysis that decide what gets funded at all, the work breakdown, the network diagram, the resource matrix that shows two projects needing the same person in the same week, the three-stage budget, and the matrix environment where the person you need has another manager with other priorities.

Then the mechanism for saying no. Four lessons on OKR as a prioritisation instrument rather than a goal-tracking one: the "from X to Y by Z" format, the quarterly cycle, and scoring it honestly at the end, which is the part most companies quietly skip.

Measurement, headcount and your own week

Then eight lessons on indicators, and specifically the honest version: critical success factors before measures, impact mapping, the traps, the reporting hierarchy, and the six myths that wreck most measurement systems, including the one about tying indicators to pay.

Then capacity in the literal sense. Six lessons on workforce planning: FTE, segmentation, gap analysis between demand and availability, forecasting through turnover analysis and Delphi, position design and real workload analysis, and the optimisation levers — combining roles, automation, internal part-time, outsourcing.

And finally your own capacity, which is the resource most people manage worst: the time audit, prioritisation, GTD and time-blocking, and delegation through RACI, task difficulty matched to skill, and the habit of not taking the work back.

Who is teaching this

Mike, the number one HR instructor on Udemy. More than 1.6 million course enrolments, over 150,000 professionals trained, PHRi and SHRM-CP certified, HRCI representative in more than 10 countries. I built the people function of the unicorn Preply and worked at Wargaming, Alfa-Bank and iDeals. Headcount planning against a delivery plan that assumed unlimited people is a conversation I have had more times than I can count, usually from the side holding the smaller number.

What is included

• Lifetime access to all course materials

• Active instructor support in the Q&A section

• Udemy Certificate of Completion

• Practical assignments and real business cases

• A section with additional courses, tools and resources

The exercise that starts it

List everything your team is committed to this quarter and, next to each item, the name of the person it actually depends on. Then count how many times the same name appears. That number is your real constraint, and no plan changes it. Enrol now and start the first lesson today.