How different teams use Resources Planner
A forward-demand board has roughly the same shape whether you’re a PMO managing a portfolio, a department head balancing BAU against project work, or a finance partner forecasting effort across the year. What changes is the rhythm of how the board gets used, who owns each row, and where the squeeze tends to surface. The patterns below are the scenarios we expect Resources Planner to be used for first; the product underneath is the same in each case.
Programme offices need a single view of demand across the portfolio that doesn't rely on chasing project managers for spreadsheets. Resources Planner gives the PMO a board it owns, fed by the team leads who own the demand items they raise.
Every project’s demand on one board, grouped by Team and Role, across the next four to eight quarters. Programme reviews open with the picture already loaded, not assembled from emails.
The red cells flag where a particular team-role-quarter intersection is over-allocated. Programme decisions land before slip dates do.
Programme offices need a single view of demand across the portfolio that doesn't rely on chasing project managers for spreadsheets. Resources Planner gives the PMO a board it owns, fed by the team leads who own the demand items they raise.
Every project’s demand on one board, grouped by Team and Role, across the next four to eight quarters. Programme reviews open with the picture already loaded, not assembled from emails.
The red cells flag where a particular team-role-quarter intersection is over-allocated. Programme decisions land before slip dates do.
What every scenario has in common is the rhythm. Demand items get raised. Capacity entries get adjusted as the team changes. The board reflects both, with the traffic-light cells lighting up where the squeeze is. The questions the board answers are the same questions PMOs and capacity managers have always asked; what changes is that the answer is in one place, kept current by the people closest to the work, and visible to everyone who needs it.
Resources Planner doesn’t own the data. Demand items and capacity slots live in SharePoint lists you already govern. Removing the web part leaves both lists exactly where they are, with their content unchanged.
Resources Planner is coming to the Microsoft commercial marketplace once the MVP build is complete. Pilot tenancies are coming online today; the full Enterprise surface ships with every install.