What is an Allocation?

Project managers are typically responsible for resource allocation. They decide which resources (such as personnel, equipment, materials and budget) are needed for specific tasks or projects and assign them accordingly.

In larger organizations, resource or portfolio managers may be responsible for allocation. These roles can help manage and coordinate resources at a higher level, especially when multiple projects are running simultaneously.

It’s important to note that effective resource allocation requires close collaboration and communication among all parties involved, including project team members and stakeholders. Everyone has a role to play in ensuring that resources are used effectively and efficiently.

Resource allocation is a central aspect of project management and is important for several reasons:

• Efficiency: Careful allocation of resources allows projects to be carried out more efficiently. Having the right resources at the right time and place helps teams avoid delays and increase productivity.
• Budget Control: Allocating helps keep the project budget under control. By assigning costs to specific resources and tasks, project managers can better track where money is being spent and ensure the project stays within budget.
• Conflict Prevention: When multiple projects compete for the same resources, conflicts can arise. Careful allocation can help avoid or minimize these conflicts.
• Quality Assurance: Allocating qualified resources to the appropriate tasks contributes to the quality of the project outcome.
• Planning and Forecasting: Resource allocation aids in project planning and forecasting. It allows project managers to track project progress and predict future resource needs.

These points highlight the critical role of resource allocation in ensuring project success and organizational efficiency.

Allocating employees to projects generally requires careful planning and consideration of several factors. Here are some steps you can follow:

• Identify Required Skills: Each project requires different skills and experience. Identify the skills needed for each task.
• Assess Employee Skills: Understand the strengths and weaknesses of each team member. Performance evaluations, colleague feedback and self-assessments can help with this.
• Assign Tasks: Assign specific tasks to each employee based on the project’s requirements and your employees’ skills. Ensure that tasks are clearly defined and understandable.
• Consider Availability: Make sure the employees you assign are available for the project’s duration. Consider vacation times, other projects and commitments.
• Communicate the Allocation: Inform each employee about their role and responsibilities on the project. Ensure they understand expectations and have the opportunity to ask questions.
• Review and Adjust: Employee allocation is not a one-time process. Regularly review the project’s progress and adjust the allocation as needed.

It is important to be fair and transparent in the allocation of employees and to ensure that the workload is evenly distributed. Effective and transparent allocation can especially help to increase employee satisfaction and boost productivity.

Resource allocation in project management can present several challenges:

• Limited Resources: Every company has a finite number of resources. Effectively assigning these resources to various projects can be challenging.
• Competing Projects: Often, multiple projects run simultaneously and compete for the same resources, which can lead to conflicts.
• Changing Requirements: Project requirements can change over time. When this happens, you may need to reallocate some resources.
• Time Management: Coordinating the availability of resources with the project schedule can be difficult.
• Skills and Experience: Not all resources are equal. Finding the right employees with the appropriate skills and experience can be a challenge.
• Cost Management: The cost of resources must be kept within the project budget, which can be particularly challenging with external resources or rented equipment.

These challenges require careful planning and management to ensure resources are used effectively and efficiently.

Allocations should be double-checked and adjusted regularly – ideally, weekly, or bi-weekly. Continuous coordination is especially important in a dynamic project portfolio so that you can catch over-allocations, bottlenecks, or idle moments early. Meisterplan supports you in this process with current resource utilization data and functionality like what-if scenarios for proactive resource planning.

The most important KPIs include:

• Resource utilization (ex., in a Plan vs. Actuals comparison in hours or percentage)
• The amount of buffer planned for key roles
• The on-time delivery of projects
• The project-resource-ROI

These figures help you measure the efficiency of your allocations and quickly see bottlenecks or inefficiencies. With Meisterplan, you can monitor these KPIs in one central location – like, for example, in the Portfolio Dashboard, or with our resource allocation heatmaps.

In Meisterplan you can see your resources’ over- and under-allocations directly in the view Team Planner, or in the Portfolio Designer. As soon as a resource is over-allocated, Meisterplan displays this in red in the allocation window (like when a person is booked over 100% of their available capacity). Under-allocations are visible when resources are more drastically under-allocated. You can see this with the gray coloring that appears.

Additionally, Meisterplan supports you with:

• Allocation heatmaps per role or resource
• Filtering by allocation statuses (ex. displaying only over-allocated resources).
• Exportable pivot reports (ex. on resource utilization per week or month).