Resource management: resource types, allocation, leveling vs smoothing, shared resources and RACI charts

Resources are everything the project needs to do its work: people (human resources), equipment such as laptops and test servers, facilities such as a training room, materials, software licenses and money. Physical resources need ordering, storing and tracking; human resources need skills, availability and motivation. Resources can be dedicated to the project full time or shared with operations or other projects. Shared resources are a frequent source of conflict: a network engineer who also handles outages may be pulled away at the worst moment, so the project manager negotiates availability with functional managers and records it in a resource calendar that shows when each person or asset is available.