Resource Allocation Template
Download the Excel template for managing project resources.
Brought to you by HiveDesk time tracking software.
Resource allocation template is very useful for allocating resources to your project’s tasks. Good resource planning is critical for the success of any project. But it becomes challenging when you’re managing multiple projects, teams, and tasks.
The goal of the resource allocation process is to ensure that resources, both human and physical, are optimally used in the project.
The optimal allocation for human resources is when no team member is overworked or under-worked.
Understanding if your team members are over or under-loaded. It’s a critical piece of information for any project manager, as you don’t want your team members to either over-work or under-work.
We created this free resource allocation template to help you better manage your project resources.
Download it now!
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What is a resource management plan?
Let’s take an example of a web development project to understand the resource allocation process.
A web development project will need people with different skills, like technology architect, database architect, UI/UX designers, and developers. They may work full time or part-time on this project.
The project manager will need to assign tasks to each of them in a way that ensures none of them is a bottleneck. At the same time, they should not spend more time on the project than is allocated. And no one should work over 8 hours in a day or 40 hours in a week.
As you can see, it’s a non-trivial problem to solve. It becomes more complex with the increase in number of people working on the project, types of tasks and length of the project. This is why project managers need help in allocating project resources.
Resource planning tools are expensive, but essential to the success of your projects.
What Is a resource plan template?
A project resource plan template helps you plan and track important information about your project, like:
- Creating project overview
- Setting project budget and managing costs
- Creating, assigning, and tracking tasks
- Managing resource allocation to projects and tasks
Also called a resource capacity planning template, it helps you in resource leveling by ensuring that no one in the team is over or under loaded.
Our free project management template includes the Gantt chart template for organizing and tracking tasks.
Why do you need a resource allocation template in Excel?
Managing resources across projects and tasks involves assigning tasks, roles, and responsibilities to your team members. By doing that, you clarify the roles that each person will play in the project and what is expected of the person. Doing it manually is complex and time consuming.
Large projects with budgets can afford to pay for resource management software or project management tools with resource planning feature. that have resource management functions. But what if you don’t have the $$$ to pay for these tools?
An Excel template is the best resource management tool for small and mid-sized projects.
Managing resources using a template helps you to more effectively manage your teams across projects.
Only the expensive project management tools have resource management feature. If you want to use manage your project resources effectively without an expensive software, then an Excel template is the only option.
Microsoft Excel is a powerful tool for managing a project, even though it’s not the best option in every case. But it’s ideal for resource management in smaller projects because:
- No training is needed to use Excel
- Built-in Date formats make it easy to assign start and end dates to resources and calculate availability
- Automatic date format adjustment for multi-country teams
- Easy to set constraints to manage resource loading
- You can control edit privileges so only authorized people can edit the project timeline
- If you use Office 365 or Google Sheets, your entire project team will get a real-time view of the project
This template is for managing human resources or team member in your projects.
How to Create a Resource Plan in Excel?
Follow these steps to create a resource plan in Excel:
- Download the template
- Open with Excel or Google Sheets
- Create a list of all team members in the last worksheet titled Project Options
- List all tasks in the third worksheet titled Blank Template
- Set start and end dates for tasks
- Assign tasks to team members
- Manage time allocation by task and resources
We created this template in Microsoft Excel because Excel is so popular, easy to use, and most companies have licenses.
The first worksheet includes instructions on how to use it. The last sheet is where you maintain the project options, such as status and a list of resources.
The second worksheet has sample data for you to understand how to use the template. The third sheet is where you enter your project’s data.
This resource management template is an Excel project tracking template you can use to manage time allocation for your team members.
Download your free copy of the project resource planning template
Resource allocation template
How do you plan the allocation of resources in a project?
Follow these steps to allocate resources in a project:
Step 1: Determine the project’s scope and identify the specific resources required to finish the project on time and within budget.
Step 2: Plan the project by dividing it into different phases and tasks. Decide what skills are needed for each task and who in your team has those skills. Also determine if there are any constraints on the tasks you should consider when allocating resources. For example, a task may be started only if another task is complete.
Step 3: Find out the availability of each resource. Some resources assigned to your project may have planned leave during the project execution. Some resources may be working on other projects and available only for a few hours each day. This is a critical piece of information for allocating resources.
Step 4: Schedule who will work on which task and when. This is the most difficult part of resource management. You have to ensure that resources with the right skill are assigned to each task and are available on the assigned dates for the required number of hours. If you allocate your resources optimally, you will be able to finish the project on time. Otherwise, resources will become a bottleneck in completing the tasks on time and within budget.
Step 5: Track progress and make adjustments to the resource allocation plan. As you move forward with the project, unexpected things may happen like someone falling sick or a task taking more time than budgeted. You will need to make changes to your project plan to accommodate these things.
Streamline your project management process
Our free project management templates are built in MS-Excel. You can use these templates to plan and track projects, assign tasks to members, manage team member workload and manage tasks. Download our ready-to-use templates and improve your project management process.
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