What Does a Project Management Resource Calendar Mean?

Scheduling is a necessary component of project management in addition to planning and budgeting. Deliverables must be completed by particular dates on your project's plan, but in order to do so, your human resources must be scheduled using a resource calendar.

To achieve that, it's essential to understand what a resource calendar is, how project management software may assist make the scheduling process more effective, and how it's utilized in project management.

What Is a Resource Calendar?

A resource calendar is a tool to make sure that your project team is available to work when you need them to execute the task. It shows who is available and when so the project manager can assign them to tasks.

Having the available working days for your team is important, but so is having a profile of each team member. The profile assists with resource calendars by allowing the project manager to quickly see who can do what. In other words, the profile shows skills and experience.

What Is the Purpose of a Resource Calendar in Project Management?

A resource calendar is an essential tool for project managers as they allow them to plan ahead knowing that the team member they assigned is available to execute the task when expected.

This might not seem significant, but if you’re working on even a somewhat complicated project, you need to know that resources are available when you need them. More than that, there are usually multiple dependencies that further complicate scheduling. Managing your resources at a high level is key to successfully delivering the project.

In fact, a project manager can plan their resources and find that the project isn’t feasible. It’s better to know this in the planning stage than after you’ve committed to the work. The last thing you want is to find out in the execution phase that you’re unequipped to handle the project due to resource constraints.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean shelving the project. Project managers have options; they can adjust the project scope, schedule, resource allocation and cost to find a viable path forward. But without using a resource calendar, this is nearly impossible.

The resource calendar is not just a tool to assign tasks more effectively but it also helps in tracking both equipment and employees. One feature of a resource calendar includes timesheets that track the amount of time that each team member is spending on tasks. There are also workload charts to balance the workload of the team and keep them productive. Gantt charts are helpful in tracking resource costs to keep you on budget.

Another purpose of the resource calendar is that it’s helpful if you’re managing a program or portfolio of projects that are sharing resources. The resource calendar helps the program or portfolio manager identify shared resources, which makes it easier for them to plan across multiple projects.

What Should Be Included in a Resource Calendar?

If it sounds like a resource calendar does a lot, well, it does. Resources include anything you need to get the project done such as people, equipment, materials and so on. That’s a lot to manage, but a resource calendar is a multifaceted tool that’s designed to handle those varied responsibilities. The following are what is included in a resource calendar, all of which should be at a project manager’s fingertips throughout the project lifecycle.

Team Members’ Information

When you onboard your team, make sure to add their information to the resource calendar. This can be general contact information such as mobile phone numbers if you need to reach them in an emergency. But you’ll also want to create a profile of their skills and experience as this information is crucial when deciding who to assign to what task.

Materials, Equipment & Other Tangible Resources

While your team is your most valuable resource, they’re not your only consideration. There are likely materials, equipment and other tangible resources that need to be considered. You’ll want to note their costs but also their availability or when your suppliers will be able to ship them so you can ensure the team has what they need when they need it.

Schedule

Identifying your resources is only the start of managing them. Now, it’s time for the calendar. The resource calendar needs to map out when the resources will be needed in the project. That’s the only way everything will be where it needs to be at the right time. Resource calendars can be daily, weekly or monthly, depending on the project and the project manager.

Daily Workload Information

A resource calendar often takes the assignments and schedule for your human resources and creates workload information. This is a chart that shows the allocation of each team member. It’s a critical tool that allows you to balance your team’s workload to boost productivity without burning them out.

Resource Calendar vs. Project Calendar

Of course, the resource calendar isn’t the only calendar used in project management. There’s also a project calendar. But are they the same thing? Both are developed during the planning phase of a project. We’ve already noted that a resource calendar shows the availability, and they are helpful when resources are shared among different projects and include human and nonhuman resources.

A project calendar helps you identify the working days and shifts of your team. Without transparency into your team’s paid time off (PTO), holidays and work days, it’s impossible to schedule your project correctly. A project schedule can be made up of as many project calendars as you need, all of which can be updated as needed.

As you can see, both the resource calendar and the project calendar are similar but they are not the same. Resource calendars are more dynamic than project calendars as changes to the resource calendar can be frequent. The project calendar is more fixed as holidays and weekends don’t necessarily change.

Benefits of Using a Resource Calendar

The resource calendar is an integral part of your resource schedule and larger resource management plan. It’s developed over the course of the planning phase of a project and sets in place the way everything will be coordinated to meet your deliverable deadlines. What are the benefits of using a resource calendar? Here are a few examples.

Better Resource Scheduling

Scheduling your resources is key to meeting your schedule. The resource calendar allows project managers to schedule ahead in cases where all resources needed to complete a task are aligned. Not having even one resource when it’s necessary is going to delay the project and add costs.

Balanced Workload for Your Team

As noted above, your team’s workload is a balancing act. You want them to work at capacity to be as productive as possible, but not overtasked so that they burn out and team morale goes into the gutter. A resource calendar allows project managers to see at a glance who is assigned what and if there is an imbalance, they can reallocate to even the workload.

Improve Resource Tracking

Your resources might be distributed across different teams, which is another benefit of the resource calendar. It offers a centralized place to track your project or portfolio resources for complete visibility.

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