HOW TO IMPROVE TIME TO MARKET
WITH EXISTING RESOURCES
The Product Development View of the
Resource Management and Capacity Planning
Benchmark Study
Commissioned by Planview
®conducted by
Appleseed Partners and OpenSky Research
Executive Summary
This report reveals the state of resource management and capacity planning in product development organizations. It shows that within these groups, there is considerable room for growth – and many of them are very aware of the need, as well of the potential benefits. What stymies product development organizations is the how and the where: how to do it, where to start.
More than 280 globally-based product development executives participated in the benchmark study1, sharing their top pain points, business risks, pain causes, software impacts, and process improvements relative to resource management and capacity planning. These executives were aware of what was at risk and spoke to their goals of improving time to market, reducing the total cost of development, and improving their ability to effectively prioritize winning ideas. They understood that not addressing resource management issues leads directly to problems, including a lack of visibility into demand and capacity resulting in ongoing chaos among their teams, missing market windows, and the inability to optimize both people and financial investments.
It should not be construed, however, that the groups participating were homogeneous. Their problems varied, as indicated by their position on the Resource Management and Capacity Planning Maturity Spectrum (Figure 1). This spectrum allowed participants to identify their groups’ maturity on a five-tier grading system from 1-Basic (having very limited understanding of resources, capacity, and demand) to 5-Optimized (having up-to-date data). Reference sectionIX. Maturity Matrix for complete details.
Roughly two-thirds of product organizations identified as low- to mid-level maturity; only a third labeled their organizations with a higher state of maturity, at which point they break through to a certain level of management control and optimization, and thus greater visibility.
Product development organizations face specific challenges when it comes to resource management and capacity
planning. What’s at stake? In short, time to market targets and revenue. If product teams choose to embrace the
status quo, they will not reap the benefits of change – optimized resources, stronger company bottom lines, better
market share and brand awareness equity.
Key findings of this Product Development View of the Resource Management and Capacity Planning Study include:
• Pain: Lacking visibility into both capacity and incoming demand and the impact of constant change.
• Business risk: Lost revenue and market share due to missed market windows, remaining in crisis mode, and
resources wasted on the wrong projects and products.
• Opportunity: Improve processes to increase resource management and capacity planning maturity; this can
support goals such as reducing total cost of development, filling the pipeline with profitable products, and speeding
time to market.
This research report is an extension of the Resource Management and Capacity Planning Benchmark Study 2013,
available at
Planview.com/RMCPBenchmarkStudy
. Containing product development specific charts and analysis not
presented in the original benchmark report, this focused view speaks explicitly to product development organizations.
Resource Management and Capacity Planning Maturity Spectrum
Key Findings
The report shows several common threads of challenges such as constant change, inaccurate project estimation, and the inability to complete projects on time. Slightly more organizations identified as more mature when it came to resource management than capacity planning (38% vs. 31%); there is significant opportunity for growth in the latter, which could help organizations prioritize more effectively and alleviate many of their pains (Figures 2 and 3).
Improvements in resource management and capacity planning come down to three things:
• Improved, consistently used processes
• Commitment, follow-through, and executive support • The right enterprise software for the job
Addressing these areas allows organizations to better align and connect products with their strategy; enables management to run critical what-if scenarios in the face of constant change; and ensures that scarce resources are leveraged wisely for the most competitive offerings and high value returns.
The Six Characteristics of Mature Organizations
As determined in the Resource Management and Capacity Planning
Benchmark Study 2013, those organizations that excel at resource
management and capacity planning performance tend to:
1. Have insight into what people are working on, can identify bottlenecks, and run scenarios on-demand, to adapt to change 2. Meld top-down with bottom-up approaches to capacity planning
and resource management
3. Have a dedicated function to lead resource management and capacity planning activities
4. Agree on these top three best practices: prioritization; what-if analysis; executive buy-in
5. Estimate projects well and have good supporting processes in place
6. Use Product Portfolio Management (PPM) software to optimize their resources
Resource Management Maturity Levels for Product Development
Figure 3: Resource Management Maturity Levels
Capacity Planning Maturity Levels for Product Development
Summary
Product organizations face unique pressures, both from the outside and within. One of those internal pressures comes from the nonconformist view that process is the enemy of creativity and innovation, rather than its support structure.
For those surveyed, no matter how mature their resource management and capacity planning performance, all said that their processes needed bolstering. Improving processes is in every product organizations’ best interest: it derisks the entire portfolio, helps drive down costs, builds efficiencies into projects, encourages innovation by enabling the prioritization of products and resources in line with strategy, and creates an environment that gets products to market faster.
When the external world continues to make its presence known – more, now, better, faster – not hitting market windows is not an option, nor is not delivering quality products or hiring more resources to make it all happen. Something has to give.
External pressures are going to continue to build. Resources are going to continue to be finite and scarce. Product groups must find better ways of dealing with these pressures, and a foundation based on consistent, enforced process is an excellent place to start. Embrace change: allow process and software to support the team and the company goals.
Key Report Statistics
Of those organizations surveyed:
• More than 50% of lower maturity organizations perceive their greatest business risk is delayed time to market resulting in
losses of revenue, savings, user/customer satisfaction, and/or market share; this reduces by more than 10% for higher maturity
organizations
• Nearly 70% of all organizations want streamlined and accurate resource and forecasting and planning to be the main result of improving resource management and capacity planning processes and using enterprise software
• The top best practices recommended by higher maturity organizations are better prioritization and performing what-if analysis
