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Resource Management Planning and Allocation
Project Management · Chapter 3: Building a Comprehensive Project PlanSection 3.3 · lesson 17 of 7313 min · free with a free account
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In this lesson
Estimating, scheduling and balancing the people and things a project uses.
- Classify resources by type and as reusable or consumed
- Estimate effort in person-hours and distinguish it from duration
- Use resource calendars, an RBS and a histogram to find over-allocation
- Explain how cross-project conflicts are escalated and what a resource management plan covers
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Transcript
Everything said in the video, section by section (1,701 words). Read along, or search it.
Opening Question
Enough Hours Overall, Too Few Weekly
Picture a network technician on an eight-week office project. The plan asks for 213 hours of her time. Her calendar gives the project 30 hours a week: 240 hours in all. Plenty, it seems. Yet in three of those weeks, the plan asks for more than she can give. How can both be true? Answering that is resource planning: deciding which resources the work needs, how much, in which periods, and how they're obtained and released.
Resource Types
People, Equipment, Materials, Facilities and Tools
A resource is anything a project uses up or occupies to produce its results. They fall into five working groups. People, grouped by skill. An hour from someone who can safely wire a panel, can't be replaced by an hour from someone who can't. Equipment: durable machinery, used and then available again, like a scissor lift or a test rig. Materials become part of the deliverable, or are used up making it, like drywall sheets or paint. Facilities are spaces the work needs: a workshop, a lab, a meeting room. And tools are smaller implements, including software, like a spreadsheet application.
Rule of Thumb
Track Items Two People Could Want
Where equipment ends and tools begin isn't fixed by any rule. A useful test: is the item scarce enough that two people could want it at the same time? A hand drill every worker carries needs no scheduling. One concrete saw shared by three crews does, so the plan tracks it.
Key Distinction
Reusable Versus Consumed Resources
A second distinction cuts across all five groups: reusable or consumed. A reusable resource stays available after use, like a lift, a room, or a person. The question is when it's free, because two jobs in the same period collide. A consumed resource is used up, like paint, drywall or fuel. The question is how much in total, and by what date it must arrive. People are reusable in an unusual way. Their hours are perishable: an hour unused this week can't be stored for next week. That's why people's capacity is always stated per period, such as hours per week.
Estimating
Effort in Person-Hours, Not Duration
With the WBS built, estimating happens at each work package: what kind of resource, how much, and in which period. People's work is measured as effort, in person-hours. One person-hour is one person working for one hour. Effort isn't duration, the calendar time from start to finish. Thirty-two person-hours take one painter four eight-hour days, or two painters about two days. Painting: 80 square meters at 2.5 square meters an hour is 32 person-hours. The paint, a consumed material: 80 square meters at 4 per liter is 20 liters. Rewiring: 8 circuits at 5 person-hours each is 40 person-hours. Estimating each package and adding them up is bottom-up estimating. Record the assumptions, like the area and the rate, so the estimate can be revisited.
Calendars
Project and Resource Calendars
Knowing a package needs forty hours of electrical work doesn't say when the electrician can supply them. The project calendar is the default schedule for everyone: working days, hours per day, and shared holidays. A resource calendar shows when one particular resource is actually available: personal leave, shifts, other commitments, or a lift booked by another team. Available hours equal scheduled hours, minus holidays, minus leave, minus hours committed elsewhere. A test engineer scheduled for 40 hours, in a week with an 8-hour holiday and 6 hours of standing duties, has 26 hours for the project. In a week with three days of approved leave, it's 40 minus 24: 16 hours. Holiday and leave rules depend on the employer, the place and sometimes the law, so those questions go to human resources or counsel.
Resource Breakdown Structure
One Name for Each Skill
To keep resource names consistent, planners use a resource breakdown structure, or RBS. It's a hierarchy of resources: first by category, then by type, then by skill or specification. For a workshop renovation: People, then skilled trades, then electrician, carpenter and painter. Equipment, then lifting equipment, then the scissor lift. Materials, then finishes, then interior paint. The WBS and the RBS are both trees. The WBS asks what has to be done; the RBS asks what the work will use. And it isn't an org chart. Write electrician, wiring technician and electrical crew for one skill, and its demand splits three ways, understated on each. A shared RBS fixes the names.
Requirements Table
What Each Work Package Needs and When
The resource requirements table lists, for each work package, the resources it needs, how much, and when. The names come from the RBS. Clearing out: 24 hours of general labor, and a debris bin, in week one. Rewiring: 40 electrician hours over weeks two and three, and the scissor lift for 3 days in week two. Drywall: 56 carpenter hours and 48 sheets. Painting: 32 painter hours and 20 liters of paint. Units differ, so add only like with like: electrician hours to electrician hours, never to drywall sheets. The lift is reusable, so another project wanting it in week two collides with this one. The paint only has to arrive by its week.
Worked Example
Reading a Resource Histogram
Back to the technician. A resource histogram shows, for one resource, how much the plan demands in each period, against a line for what's available. Demand sums the requirement rows for each week. Capacity comes from her resource calendar: thirty hours a week. Utilization is demand divided by capacity, times 100 percent. Anything above 100 percent is over-allocation. Adding her work packages week by week gives twelve, twenty-four, twenty-eight, thirty-six, twenty-eight, thirty-three, thirty-six, and sixteen hours. Week four is 36 over 30: 120 percent. Week six, 110 percent. Week seven, 120 percent again. Those three weeks are over by 6, 3 and 6 hours: 15 in all. Yet the total, 213 hours against 240, fits. The problem is entirely timing: idle capacity in weeks one and eight, too little in four, six and seven. So examine demand period by period, never only in total. And a histogram shows one skill at a time; it reveals overload without repairing it.
Quick Check
Finding the Over-Allocated Week
Quick check. A designer gives a project 25 hours a week. The plan asks for 20, 30 and 15 hours in weeks one to three. Which week is over-allocated? Pause, and decide. The middle week. Thirty divided by twenty-five is 1.2, or 120 percent. Weeks one and three sit at 80 and 60 percent, even though the three weeks together need 65 hours, against 75 available.
Allocation Conflict
A Double-Booked Database Specialist
Most specialists don't belong to one project. An allocation conflict arises when two projects claim the same resource in the same period, beyond what it can supply. A database specialist has thirty hours a week across the whole organization. Project North needs 20 hours in week four and 24 in week five: about 67 and 80 percent. Fine. Project South needs 16 and 12: about 53 and 40 percent. Also fine. Together, it's 36 hours in both weeks: 120 percent. The specialist is double-booked. Each project looked healthy, because each manager saw only their own histogram. The conflict shows only on one combined chart.
Escalation
Taking Conflicts Upward With Evidence
The plan can make the conflict visible. It can't decide it, because neither project manager owns the specialist's time. So the matter is escalated: referred upward, to someone with authority, along with the evidence. Often that's the functional manager, who runs the specialist's department and controls its assignments. In some organizations it's the project management office, which may hold a resource pool of shared specialists. The escalation carries the combined histogram and the options: move demand to another period, add capacity, or accept a later finish for one project.
Debate
Central Pool or Project Control
Should specialists sit in a central pool, or with the projects that use them? Both sides have a strong case. For pooling: skilled people are scarce. One body that sees all the demand can place them where need is greatest, and stop defensive double-reserving. For project-held control: accountability needs authority. A manager answerable for a result should control its inputs, and dedicated people learn the project. The empirical part asks what actually happens: does pooling raise the use of specialist hours, shorten waits, or change results? An organization's own records answer that. The normative part asks what should come first: organization-wide efficiency, or each project's autonomy. Evidence informs the first part, but can't settle the second.
RACI Link
Answerability Versus Hours
The responsibility chart, or RACI, records who is responsible and accountable for each piece of work. It's about answerability, not hours. A site supervisor may be accountable for the drywall package, while three carpenters do the framing and hanging. The supervisor sits in the RACI. The carpenters' hours sit in the requirements table, and the supervisor's only as far as oversight takes real time. Two checks follow. Every package with performing resources needs a named, answerable person in the RACI. And every role the RACI names as doing work must appear as a skill in the requirements table. Otherwise the chart promises a performer the plan never schedules.
Quick Check
Two Tilers, Forty-Eight Hours
Quick check. Tiling a floor takes 48 person-hours. Two tilers work side by side, eight hours a day, at equal speed. About how many working days will it take? Pause, and decide. Three days. Two tilers give sixteen hours a day, and forty-eight divided by sixteen is three. The effort stays forty-eight person-hours; only the duration shrinks. Six days would be one tiler working alone.
Resource Management Plan
Six Core Topics of the Plan
All of this goes into the resource management plan: how resources will be estimated, acquired, managed and released. Six topics form its core. Roles: the duties, skill and authority each role needs, linked to the RACI and the RBS. Acquisition: assigned from a pool, hired, borrowed, rented or bought, with lead times. A specialist who takes six weeks to hire can't start in week one. Calendars, the source of every capacity line. And training, to close skill gaps, remembering that time spent learning isn't spent on the work. Release: when each person goes back to their manager, or a rented machine is returned. And recognition, planned in advance from what the organization can actually offer. Overload found in the plan is resolved during execution, by leveling and smoothing the schedule, which come later in the course.
Key Takeaways
Kind, Amount and Period
To recap. Plan each resource by kind, amount and period, using consistent names from the RBS. Effort, in person-hours, is not duration. Check demand against each resource's calendar, period by period, not only in total. And make cross-project conflicts visible, then escalate them with the evidence.
About Project Management at UPI Study
Project Management (Business 230) is a self-paced online course of 73 video lessons in 12 chapters, from starting and defining a project to planning, budgets, scheduling tools, proposals, contracts, execution, monitoring, closure, teams and certification. It carries a NCCRS credit recommendation for 3 semester credits.
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