How to manage resources and workload across projects

Key terms in resource management

• Resource: a person, a team or a role (for example "electrical engineer"), and sometimes equipment.
• Capacity: the hours a resource can give to project work in a period, after leave, holidays, meetings and support duties.
• Demand: the hours assigned to that resource across all projects in the same period.
• Utilisation: demand / capacity. Above 100% means over-allocation; well below it means spare capacity.
• Resource leveling: moving or splitting activities so no resource is over-allocated, even if the finish date moves.
• Resource smoothing: evening out the workload only within available float, so the finish date does not move.

How to manage workload across projects in six steps

1. List your resources and their real capacity. Start from the working week, subtract leave and holidays, then subtract the share of time each person spends on non-project work. Be honest; nobody gives 40 project hours in a 40-hour week.
2. Put every project in one place. Workload is only visible across projects. One person on three projects managed in three tools looks fine in each and is overloaded in total.
3. Assign work to named people or roles with dates. Early in planning, assign roles; name people once the project is approved.
4. Compare demand with capacity by week for each person, and flag anyone above 100% or far below it.
5. Resolve conflicts using float first, then the options in the next section, and escalate to portfolio priorities when two projects collide.
6. Review weekly. Plans change; a workload view that is a month old is fiction. A 30-minute weekly review between project managers and line managers catches most problems.

Worked example: one engineer, three projects

Sara works a 40-hour week. She spends about 8 hours a week on support and meetings, so her project capacity is 32 hours. Here is her assigned work for the next four weeks:

Week	Project A	Project B	Project C	Demand	Capacity	Utilisation
1	16	12	0	28	32	88%
2	16	16	12	44	32	138%
3	8	16	12	36	32	113%
4	8	4	0	12	32	38%

Over four weeks her total demand is 28 + 44 + 36 + 12 = 120 hours against 4 × 32 = 128 hours of capacity. In total she has room; the problem is timing. Weeks 2 and 3 are overloaded by 12 + 4 = 16 hours, and week 4 has 20 hours free.

The schedules show that her Project C task has 2 weeks of total float, while her Project B work is on B's critical path. So the fix is to start the Project C task one week later: week 2 drops to 32 hours, week 3 becomes 8 + 16 + 12 = 36, still 4 over, and week 4 takes 12 hours of C, rising to 24. The remaining 4 hours in week 3 come from moving 4 hours of Project A's non-critical work into week 4, which ends at 28 hours. No finish date moved. That is resource smoothing done by hand, with float as the guide.

Ways to fix over-allocation

Work through these options in order, from least to most disruptive:

1. Use float. Delay non-critical work within its float. Dates do not move.
2. Reassign. Give the task to someone with the same skills and spare capacity.
3. Split the task. Do part now and part later, if the work allows it.
4. Reduce scope on lower-priority work, with the sponsor's agreement.
5. Add capacity: overtime for a short peak, a contractor, or a new hire for a lasting gap.
6. Move the date. Delay critical work and accept a later finish. This is resource leveling, and it is a portfolio decision, not a quiet choice by one project manager.

When two projects want the same person in the same week, decide by agreed portfolio priority, not by who shouts loudest. If you do not have priorities yet, a simple scoring model is the place to start.

A weekly resource review agenda

Keep the meeting short and the same every week. Project managers and line managers attend; the PMO or a portfolio lead chairs.

Item	Question	Time
Over-allocated people	Who is above capacity in the next two to four weeks, and on which projects?	10 min
Fixes using float	Which non-critical tasks can move without changing a finish date?	5 min
Conflicts to escalate	Where do two critical tasks need the same person, and which project has priority?	5 min
Spare capacity	Who is well below capacity and could take work or help another team?	5 min
New demand	Which approved projects or changes start soon and need people?	5 min

Record each decision and its owner, and update the assignments in the schedule the same day.

Common resource management mistakes

• Planning at 100% capacity. Leave room for the unplanned; people at full load have no slack for problems.
• Looking at one project at a time. Over-allocation is almost always a cross-project problem.
• Ignoring float. Moving critical work to relieve a person delays the whole project; moving non-critical work often costs nothing.
• Too much detail. Planning every person by the hour for a year ahead is wasted effort. Plan by role far out, by name for the next few weeks.
• No owner for conflicts. Decide in advance who settles clashes between projects: usually the PMO or portfolio board.

How to do this in Critova

Critova has a resources workload view that shows assignments across all projects in a workspace, so you can spot people who are booked on several projects in the same period. Critical path scheduling gives you total and free float for every activity, which tells you which work can move without changing a finish date, and the portfolio dashboards help settle which project gets priority.

Two honest limits: Critova does not yet level resources automatically (it is planned), so you move non-critical activities yourself as in the example above; and it has no timesheets, so actual hours come from elsewhere if you need them. See the portfolio features and the critical path method guide to learn how float works.