Resource allocation

Resource allocation translates staffing into an operational grid: for each person, it states how many days or what percentage of their time goes to each project, week by week or month by month.

In a PSA, allocation is the basis for generating revenue, cost and margin forecasts, and also for validating timesheets (logged hours should not diverge too much from allocated ones). Good allocation avoids overbooking (>100% of available time) and excessive fragmenting (a person spread across 5+ concurrent projects), which reduce productivity and quality.

Fragmentation is the cost that allocation grids consistently understate. A person split across five projects at twenty percent each is not equivalent to one person: the context switching, the five status meetings and the five sets of client expectations consume time that never appears in any cell of the grid. Capping concurrent assignments is usually worth more than optimising the percentages.

Allocation is only as good as the revision rhythm behind it. A grid built once a quarter is a document; one revised for twenty minutes every week is a tool, and the difference is that decisions get taken while they are still cheap. The weekly pass that works asks the same three questions: what changed in confirmed demand, who is over- or under-allocated in the next four weeks, and what must be decided this week.