Allocation

Allocation is the operational act of pairing a person or a generic role with a project, a window in time and an effort level. The effort can be expressed as hours per week, a percentage of full time or an FTE share. A typical allocation reads as "Maya is allocated to Project Atlas at 60 percent from June 3 to August 30." The allocation is what a producer commits to and what a resource manager protects from conflicts.

In a capacity report, the sum of all allocations against a person for a given period defines that person's load. Comparing load to available hours is what surfaces under-allocation, full utilization and over-allocation. Holding allocations as structured records, rather than as cells in a spreadsheet, is what allows the same data to feed individual schedules, trade-level demand views and executive rollups without re-keying.

Related: soft booking, tentative project, FTE.