Try It!
If you identify over or under-utilised resources, you should meet with the appropriate project managers to identify ways to deal with these issues and update and approve resource requests and redistribute the work appropriately.
To identify and resolve resource over-allocations:
- Ensure you are in the Resources area, click Availability Heat-map in the Resources section.
Tip: First, it’s important to understand the colour coding of the heat-map. Starting at the over-allocated end of the scale, any resource commitment that is more than 10% over the resource’s capacity will be red and should be resolved. Resources that are between 100 and 110% of their capacity are dark green in recognition that a little over allocation is probably acceptable as resource requests are estimates only, and then on the under-utilised side of things the colour ranges from dark blue for not used at all to a lighter green for near full utilisation. - Use the buttons on the sub-grid tool bar to define the start date, number of periods and view zoom level (typically monthly).
- Review any red or over-allocated resources by hovering over the red cells and reviewing the calculations to better understand the cause of the overallocation.
- Click the ellipses (…) to the left of the resource name and select Open Resource and/or click the ellipses (…) to the left of the project name and select Open Project to see more details about the resource’s allocation.
Important: The Availability Heat-map does not support updates as you will typically need to work with the project managers to identify the appropriate corrective actions to remove over-allocations by updating the resource requests to reduce hours for that resource and creating new resource requests for an under allocated resource to keep the total level of resource commitment to the project consistent.
Download Job Aid: Identifying Resource Overallocation and Allocation Variance.