Resource Capacity Planning

Last updated: September 14, 2026

Most teams track capacity in a spreadsheet with one row per person and one column per project. It works until people are on several projects with different start and end dates, which is to say it works until it matters. At that point the spreadsheet starts producing numbers that are confidently wrong, and the first sign of trouble is usually a delivery date slipping rather than a cell turning red.

The mistake most capacity tracking makes

The common error is adding allocation percentages that never actually overlap in time.

Consider one engineer on two pieces of work:

• 40 percent on a platform migration, February to May
• 50 percent on a reporting rollout, February to March

A spreadsheet that sums the columns reports 90 percent for that person, flat, across the whole period. That figure is wrong in both directions at once. During February and March the engineer really is at 90 percent, and the tracker does not draw attention to it because 90 is under 100. From April onwards they are at 40 percent and have real capacity available, but the tracker still shows 90, so nobody assigns them anything.

The number you need is the peak concurrent allocation, which is the highest total load at any point in the period, not the sum of everything assigned. Project Paced calculates that figure rather than adding percentages together.

The four questions capacity planning has to answer

Who is over capacity, and when. Not whether someone is busy, but which specific weeks or months take them beyond one hundred percent, and which projects are competing during that window.

Who has genuine availability. Spare capacity is only useful if you can see when it falls. Somebody free in six weeks does not help with a problem next week.

Who is carrying too much of a single project. If one person holds a large share of the work on a project, the schedule depends on that person staying well and staying employed. That is a risk worth naming before it becomes an incident.

What happens if you add this project. New work is committed against a plan, not against a feeling about how busy the team seems.

How Project Paced handles it

Team members are held once as a roster with their department and maximum capacity. Allocations are made per project, as time-phased periods with a start and an end date, so a person can be at 20 percent on one project for six weeks and 60 percent on another for three months without those numbers being flattened into a single average.

From that, the platform derives:

• Peak concurrent allocation per person, portfolio-wide and scoped to an individual project
• Over-capacity warnings when overlapping periods take someone beyond their limit, raised as a warning rather than a block, because sometimes the right decision is to proceed knowingly
• A portfolio capacity view showing who is over-allocated, who is stretched and who has room, across a date range you choose
• Key person risk, flagging where a single individual holds a disproportionate share of a project
• Available capacity, flagging people with meaningful unused time

Allocations are also drawn as a timeline, by project and across the portfolio, with over-allocated periods marked. The point is to see when a clash occurs, not only that one exists somewhere.

Asking about capacity in plain language

Because the same data is available through our MCP server, you can ask a connected assistant such as Claude or ChatGPT directly:

• "Who is over-allocated in Q4, and on which projects?"
• "Does anyone have spare capacity in November?"
• "Who is the key person risk on the Atlas rollout?"

This is usually faster than opening a dashboard when the question arrives mid-conversation, and it is how most portfolio reviews actually start.

Capacity in the weekly report

Capacity findings feed the weekly status report. Over-capacity and key person concentration appear under what is at risk, scoped to the people actually working on that project so the report stays relevant to its audience.

Availability

Resource capacity planning is an Enterprise feature, licensed for teams of five seats or more and invoiced directly. It includes the team roster, per-project allocation, the portfolio capacity view, project health and the attention list.

To discuss a deployment, contact support@projectpaced.com.

Frequently asked questions

How is peak concurrent allocation different from total allocation? Total allocation adds every percentage assigned to a person regardless of dates. Peak concurrent allocation finds the highest combined load at any single point in time. Where assignments do not overlap, the two differ significantly, and the total is the misleading one.

Does the system stop me over-allocating someone? No. It warns you and shows the combined percentage and the periods that clash. Deliberate short-term over-allocation is a legitimate decision, so the choice stays with you.

Are resources shared across projects? Yes. The team roster is held once for the account, and allocations are made per project, so one person's load is visible across the whole portfolio.

Can I export capacity data? Yes. Allocation data exports to CSV, and the capacity views export as images for reporting.