Workload plan: Tutorial in a project portfolio
The workload plan is at the heart of resource management and for the success outcome of projects. When a driver turns the ignition key, they quickly glance at the level of the fuel tank on the dashboard. When a PMO launches their PPM software, they quickly go and check the workload plan of their portfolio. It’s a project management reflex! The workload plan is a tool at the crossroads of all project management processes: scheduling, resource management, budget management and risk management. It combines the challenges of “who?” “when?” “how many?” and “what?”.
Do you want to have an overview of your resources, their availability and their assignments to projects and activities?
Do you need to control the ability of your resources to cope with demand?
This tutorial gives you the keys to manage your workload plan
- Manage a workload plan collaboratively
- Manage the workload plan in project portfolio mode
- The tools to manage the workload plan: Excel vs. a PPM tool
- The prerequisites for efficient management of the workload plan
- The units and indicators of the workload plan
How to manage a workload plan collaboratively
The workload plan is a key tool for PMOs, Managers and Project Managers
The workload plan managers will contribute according to their responsibility in the project portfolio, the project and the project phases:
- The PMO will examine the decision-making processes for launching projects by overlaying the workload levels of the projects in progress, the project execution capacities and the workload plans of candidate projects. The PMO works on the workload plan at a strategic level and from a monthly standpoint (activity report, project launch), a quarterly standpoint (project launch, forecast) and an annual standpoint (prospective and budget vision).
- The manager (or resource manager) will ensure that the right allocations are made and will work on the level of availability of the resources. They will monitor the workload plan of their department or service, particularly by comparing the level of assignment to the capacity. They work on the workload plan with from a weekly and monthly standpoint.
- The project manager will work on the proper organisation of their project team and ensure in particular that the tasks are correctly taken charge of. They generally work on the workload plan from a weekly standpoint for the operational schedule of their teams, at the same time synchronising with that of the governance (e.g. monthly for the steering committee).
The execution resources are characterised in the workload plan by:
- skills – in the sense of useful know-how and knowledge for the project. There can be multiple skills according to the phase of the project.
- a capacity – in the sense of the amount of work which can be dedicated to the project – most often expressed in days.
- a hierarchical department or service – this is the manager of the resource in the case of people, the equipment resource manager in the case of equipment or infrastructure.
- Last but not least, an estimate of the workload for a given date for a task to be performed.
The execution resources have an indirect but vital action to perform for the workload plan:
- They declare the time spent in their timesheet according to a typology that is similar or at least transposable in the workload plan
- They give their estimate of the “remaining work” for the tasks entrusted to them
How to manage the workload plan in project portfolio mode
A project portfolio workload plan is a tool:
- to get information on the theme of the resources
- to make decisions which supply a large number of management routines (project and organisational)
- used to support the collective exchanges involved in resource management
- A workload plan is a tool which addresses both strategic and operational challenges. Do we have the capacity to launch a new project? Who will work on such-and-such a task next week? The purpose is to optimise and align projects with the capacity of the organisation.
| Levels | Resource | Project | Portfolio |
| Operational | Who will work on which task? Who will work on the project in the upcoming week, or month? Who will be assigned to other activities? | When will the task be finished? How long will it be necessary to work on the task? What will be completed during the week? | What is the teams’ level of staffing? What is the risk level on the workload plan? |
| Tactical | Who will be available to work on the project? Who will work on which phase? What are the training needs? | When will the different phases of the project be completed? How much will the project cost? Do we have to subcontract part of the project? Do we need to call upon external service providers? | How much will the project portfolio cost? How will the resources be distributed per portfolio theme? What are the skills needed? |
| Strategic | What are the recruitment needs? | When will the project be completed and what will the cost be? Make or Buy? Do we need to do the project ourselves or have it done? | What project can we launch? What is the project/recurrent activity distribution? What is the turnover forecast? |
How to manage the workload plan
The workload plan is a composite tool grouping a large amount of data:
- Know what is to be completed and when it needs to be completed with schedule data
- Have an overview of the time spent and the remaining work with individual data
- Collective data about the capacities and assignments: the team workload plans
Therefore, management of the workload plan will be found in:
- the project schedule (or Gantt chart)
- the resources’ timesheet
- the individual workload plan of a resource
- the workload plan of a pool of resources
- the capacity planning of a resource or a project. In addition to the estimated workload, it is compared to the maximum capacity to deduce “over-assignment” or the “available remaining capacity”.
- the dashboards enabling the various types of data to be presented, combined and queried
The workload plan is also particularly managed in a dedicated meeting or project management meeting:
- Resource assignment committee where it will be decided who will work on which project
- Project review where the assignments will be adjusted according to one-off incidents or constraints
- Decision-making committee for the project portfolio where decisions will be made with the help of information, particularly concerning capacity
What tools are used to develop a workload plan?
The limits in Excel
Excel quickly reveals its limits when you have a large volume of data to manage:
- The information is not updated in real-time.
- The files are not automated and contain errors. If you need to enter the same information several times, you run the risk of making input and calculation mistakes which have significant repercussions on resource management and therefore on the company’s activity level.
- Excel is not a decision-making support tool. The tool is not designed to feed back important information in real-time in a simple, visual manner.
The benefits of PPM software
A PPM – project portfolio management – tool such as Project Monitor is a project and portfolio management software tool.
The key benefits:
- Anticipate the workload
- Allocate the right people at the right time
- Boost project profitability using ROI logic on time spent
- Invoicing of time spent
- Fewer mistakes with automated information updated in real-time
Example of the workload plan – the key functions in Project Monitor:
- Possibility to search/find/filter resources using various filter attributes and criteria, including skills, roles/business lines.
- Colour indicators to quickly identify resources which are under-used or over-used, whether during project execution or its planning.
- Analysis of the ability of grouped resources to perform, categorising them by role and defining a threshold to impose the inventory of investments, programmes, projects or work elements.
- The workload plan evolves automatically and by choice according to the time spent and passing time to give a realistic view of the upcoming workloads. You, therefore, benefit from monthly, weekly and daily planning and facilitated decision-making/forecast.
In addition, PPM software is intuitive for the global monitoring of the portfolio and projects, particularly:
- Project progress monitoring with the Gantt chart
- Viewing of the project portfolio health (risks, delays) with dashboards
- Project monitoring and task management with the Kanban
- An overview of the dependencies between phases and milestones
- Budget monitoring and control
Many professionals think that Project Monitor is essential for their resource management: The City and Metropole of Chartres, Heppner, Brittany Ferries, Maisons & Cités and Butagaz use Project Monitor’s progressive planning function.
“Our schedule is constantly controlled in line with the updating of data relative to capacity and demand”
Project Monitor, the resource management software elected User Choice 2021
Manage the ability of your resources to complete the projects in your portfolio
Project Monitor is a resource and project portfolio management software tool. It provides resource management functions including the workload plan, time monitoring and planning. Project managers often use this type of resource management software to analyse the demand and the capacity of the resources in order to create forecasts concerning the projects. Discover our simple online PPM – Project Portfolio Management – tool enabling you to plan, organise and manage the work of your teams from A to Z: budget, schedule, tasks, reporting.
Appvizer, the number one online software comparator, named Project Monitor as its “User Choice” for resource planning.
The prerequisites for efficient management of the workload plan
A workload plan is based on structural data (to be modelled in your workload plan) and circumstantial data. In this context, a PPM platform is essential.
The main structural information – to be updated in case of evolution:
- Modelling of the organisation to determine resource hierarchy and skills
- Modelling of the portfolio themes
- The skills required for a project with the list of skills (modelled for example by generic resources)
- The people who will be assigned to the projects and activities with the list of the organisation’s named resources
- The list of external resources who work for the organisation: a situation regularly encountered in IT departments with the use of “technical support” and which it can be useful to identify in the reference base
- A reference base of the routine activities in order to have an exhaustive workload plan for the resources which are not 100% dedicated to projects
- A holiday management system – it should be noted that holidays can be managed as a recurring activity
- Workload graphs – established by studying the timesheets
- The “live” information which will be constantly updated – in general on a weekly basis and at least once a month:
- A timesheet – in particular enabling the “remaining work” to be identified (= forecast workload – workload completed)
- A list of projects in progress
- A detailed schedule for the projects in progress with an estimate of at least the overall workload for the main phases of the project
- A list of candidate projects
Definition of a workload plan
A workload plan facilitates planning and optimises resource assignment
To successfully complete a project portfolio, a workload plan is a tool for preparation, control and projection into the future of the volume of work to be completed. It also integrates the capacity and skills of the resources.
A workload plan is in a matrix format with multiple dimensions:
- The time broken down into two themes: the duration of the projects and the scale of organisation of the workload plan
- The projects to be completed in the portfolio
- The resources assigned to the projects and activities. These are most often human resources, but can also be material resources
- Recurring activities which monopolise resources
- The capacities of the resources (duration of work, part-time work, working days, etc.)
- The skills or typologies of the resources
The units and indicators of the workload plan
“Workload plan” also means “time”. Time will be broken down into different scales and be found in the main indicators linked to the workload plan.
The planning unit of reference is most often the “day” and it concerns human resources, the “person-day” (abbreviated as “pd”). Depending on the nature of the projects and activities, the unit can be the hour.
This concept of time is also applied to the planning deadline. The further we go into the future, the more global the estimate is.
Thus, when you work on the workload plan for the following week, you work in fractions of a day (or even hour). “Such-and-such a resource will work two hours on Tuesday morning on such-and-such a task”. At an annual planning level, you work more globally, for example in EFT – equivalent full time. However, most often the sizing of projects is based on the day.
The main indicators of the workload plan are:
- La capacité de la ressource = capacité totale – (la charge planifiée + charge réalisée). Si c’est positif on parlera de « reste disponible ». Si c’est négatif, on parlera de dépassement et il faudra ajuster soit les délais soit affecter une autre ressource.
- Le capacity planning – on projette la notion de capacité sur le planning du projet ou du portefeuille de projet. Associé à un code couleur, on identifie ainsi les « périodes » où une ressource est soit sur-affectée soit sous-affectée.
- Le Reste A Faire (RAF) : c’est la charge restante estimée pour mener à bien une tâche, une phase ou un projet. Le plan de charge travaille exclusivement sur cette notion de reste à faire. C’est la valeur à « répartir » dans le temps à venir. Il est défini par le chef de projet, ou la ressource, et pilote ainsi l’estimation d’atterrissage en termes de charge pour la phase/projet donné (l’estimé étant alors défini comme la somme de la charge réalisée et du RAF)