Resource allocation

Resource allocation is the targeted assignment of resources to projects, tasks or activities. In project business it mainly concerns people, time budgets and money, and decides who works on what, for how long and with which means. It matters most where several projects run at once and people work on several of them in parallel.

Which resources are allocated in project business?

Four kinds. People, whose working time and know-how are the most important resource in a service company. Time, the hours or days set aside for each task. Budget, for external service providers, software or project expenses. And technical resources, the systems, infrastructure or specialized tools some projects need.

What is taken into account when allocating resources?

Available capacity, the competencies the work requires, the priority of each project and how long it runs. Project managers decide which resources go to which tasks and how they are distributed over the whole duration of the project. That decision is the foundation on which delivery is planned.

What happens without structured resource allocation?

Projects are delayed and people are scheduled for too many tasks at the same time. Structured allocation spreads the work more evenly across employees, keeps individual teams from being overloaded, shows bottlenecks early and makes project plans more realistic, because each assignment is made against the capacity that is actually available.

How does software support resource allocation?

It shows employee utilization, plans project capacity, flags resource conflicts early and adjusts the plan when a project changes. PSA and project ERP systems go a step further and connect resource planning with project management and financial management, so that staffing, delivery and money are planned on the same records.

Related terms

• Resource management
• Capacity planning
• Workload management

troi plans assignments against real availability. See resource planning.