Forecasting Resource Allocations

Forecasting resources in projects is an important aspect of project management that involves estimating the time, cost, and other resources required to complete a project successfully.  When completing resource management within Fluid, you are able to toggle between forecasting resources in headcount terms, to forecasting in terms of hours, this promotes a dynamic understanding of resource allocation, workload distribution and more accurate cost estimation.

There are a couple of steps involved in forecasting resource allocations:

• Identify the resources needed: Define the resources that will be needed to complete each task. This includes everything from personnel to equipment and supplies.
  
  
• Allocate the resources: Estimate the monthly allocation of each resource. The financial impact will be automatically calculated based on the resource's rate card.

This article will cover how project managers can forecast and manage resource allocation.  

Managing Resource Allocations

• To start off, access the resource allocation page by navigating to the Community section on the project workspace and selecting the Edit Allocation option.

The Manage Allocations Plans page box allows you to enter resources as a decimal percentage of 1 full resource. 

Rate cards are applied to forecasted resources which becomes the forecast resource cost to a project.

	: Add resources to the project directly from the Manage Allocation Plans dialog box - as you would when adding members. : Group the listed resources by role or engagement type. : From here you can filter your view of resources. If you find a resource is missing from your input table select All Resources from the filter drop down. : Choose to display skills attributed to resource profiles. : From here you can choose how you would like to allocate and view all allocations in your current plan, you can choose to allocate in terms of Headcount or in hours per month.
	You can remove resources from your project by clicking on the little x next to their entry. But Note:  Resources that are included under the project settings (i.e. Primary PM, Executive, Business Owner) cannot be removed from a project Resources that have a saved forecast or have captured time-sheets against a project cannot be removed from a project
	Scroll backwards and forwards through the months or fiscal years by clicking on the arrows either side of the date ranges.

Adding a new resource to the project

As resource lists are established, the resources can be added by using the Add Resource option.

To learn more about adding a resource, refer to the using resource filters article here . 

To include resource placeholders where named resources are not defined yet, you can refer to the allocating resource placeholders to projects article, here . 

Overallocation

Fluid won't let you save a forecast to your project for any resources that are over allocated. 

When you hit save, Fluid will list any overallocation details - the resources affected and the other projects they are allocated to - giving you an opportunity to amend your forecast or negotiate on resource needs.

Project Resource Allocation

Resources can be allocated to more than one project - they can be allocated to sub-projects which are linked to a parent project. On the project workspace of a parent project, sub-projects are displayed to view where and how much time a resource is allocated to.