Allocation must consider period and reserved capacity share while separating planned work from work confirmed by its owner.
Index
Reserving someone for an entire project can block shorter tasks from other contracts; daily availability alone also hides commitments.
The rule that changes the scope
Allocation must consider period and reserved capacity share while separating planned work from work confirmed by its owner.
A resource planner handles simple allocation; customization manages shared limits and changes across simultaneous contracts.
Planned capacity may include internal activity, travel and mandatory meetings depending on the organization. Do not treat every absence of a task as free time. Also define whether a reservation is provisional or confirmed and who may change its state. A project's customer should receive a forecast consistent with approved allocation without seeing details from other companies' contracts that happen to share the same specialist.
Specify operational deliverables
- Associate each reservation with specialist, project and actual work window.
- Show combined commitments before accepting another allocation in the same period.
- Keep approved changes and their effects on projects losing capacity.
Test the exception before acceptance
In a hypothetical scenario, two projects request the same specialist during one morning; confirmation must expose the competition and allow an explicit decision.
Reference for assessing scope
NN/g: writing task scenarios for usability testing
Prepare your project with Quantum9
Bring a specialist's schedule and the rule used to divide availability.