April 18, 2025

Stop the Talent Madness: Unleash Resource Management Sanity!

SPM Mythbusters Series

3 min read

Key Takeaways

Establish effective resource management, which starts with accurately defining roles, not just individuals.
Focus on interchangeability to create flexible resource pools.
Prioritize consistent skills tracking to identify and address skill gaps.

Resource management is often a chaotic mess, with leaders struggling to understand who they have, what they can do, and how to allocate them effectively. This chaos is often fueled by a fundamental misunderstanding of how to categorize and manage talent. It's time for a "talent management" myth buster.

The "individual" trap

The biggest mistake is managing resources as individuals, rather than as roles. It's like organizing your tool shed by serial number instead of by the function of the tool. As you get more and more "tools," you run into management problems. You can't see where bottlenecks are and what skills are lacking. You end up with a fragmented, inefficient mess.

Roles: The key to interchangeability

Think of roles as buckets, and skills as the water droplets inside those buckets. The key is not to get lost on each skill, but to be able to organize around what's important.

A role is defined by interchangeability. Are you willing to switch one person for another to perform a task? If so, they fill the same role. If not, they should be considered separate roles.

Example of a role: Product manager. Jane, John, or Alfred can do it.

Example of not a role: The "do-everything" person.

Once you have roles to build around, managing the water droplets—skills, resources, and so on—becomes much easier.

Skills: Matching, not measuring

Skills are important, but they shouldn't be used to create an overly granular, unmanageable role structure. Skills are best used for matching people to specific tasks or projects, not for measuring aggregate demand. Tracking skills is helpful to see if, in general, there are sufficient resources for certain things.

Skills are for matching and finding, not measuring demand.

Visibility: The foundation of effective resource management

The first step towards better resource management is visibility. Do you know who you have? Do you know what roles they perform? Do you know what skills they possess? For many organizations, the answer is no. And if the answer is yes, the inventory isn’t kept up to date.

By implementing a system that encourages consistent skills tracking, you can gain valuable insights into your organization's talent pool. How many people know how to work on AI initiatives? If the answer is not enough, what are you going to do about it?

Reclaim control of your resources

Effective resource management isn't about tracking individuals. It's about creating a system that allows you to:

Define roles: Focus on interchangeability, not specific skills.
Track skills: Identify and address skill gaps across the organization.
Prioritize visibility: Ensure your skills inventory is accurate and up to date.

By mastering these fundamentals, you can unlock the full potential of your workforce and drive greater success.

Tag(s): ValueOps , Clarity , Resource Management , Skills Management

Jason Kotlinski

Jason Kotlinski serves as Product Manager for Clarity with clients all across the globe. He is responsible for customer-facing aspects of product management, leading development of key marketable features, and assisting senior management with backlog prioritization and new feature definition.

Other resources you might be interested in

Blog February 11, 2026

The Architecture Shift Powering Network Observability

Discover how NODE (Network Observability Deployment Engine) from Broadcom delivers easier deployment, streamlined upgrades, and enhanced stability.

Read Blog

Office Hours February 5, 2026

Rally Office Hours: February 5, 2026

Learn about new endorsed widgets and UX research needs, and hear from the Rally team about key topics like user admin, widget conversion, custom grouping, Slack integration, and Flow State filtering.

View Recording

Course February 2, 2026

AppNeta: Design Browser Workflows for Web App Monitoring

Learn how to design, build, and troubleshoot Selenium-based browser workflows in AppNeta to reliably monitor web applications and validate user experience.

Go to Training

Course February 2, 2026

DX NetOps: Time Zone and Business Hours Configuration and Usage

Learn how to set and manage time zones and business hours within DX NetOps Portal to ensure accurate data display and optimize analysis and reporting.

Go to Training

Office Hours January 29, 2026

Rally Office Hours: January 29, 2026

Learn more about the deep copy feature, and then hear a follow-up discussion on the slipped artifacts widget and more in this week's session of Rally Office Hours.

View Recording

Blog January 28, 2026

When DIY Becomes a Network Liability

While seemingly expedient, custom scripts can cost teams dearly. See why it’s so critical to leverage a dedicated network configuration management platform.

Read Blog

Blog January 26, 2026

Three Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Connect Just Any Team Tool to Clarity

See how connecting the wrong tools to Clarity can introduce more risk than value. Employ Rally and Clarity to enforce governance and filter out noise.

Read Blog

Office Hours January 22, 2026

Rally Office Hours: January 22, 2026

Learn about a custom view for dependency and blocked work reporting, plus a new field locking feature for admins.

View Recording

Course January 22, 2026

DX NetOps: Install Network Configuration Management

Learn how to install DX NetOps Network Configuration Management.

Go to Training