A step-by-step beginner’s guide to resource planning for multiple projects.
Resource planning for multiple projects is like doing several jigsaws at the same time – with pieces that can fit more than one puzzle.
How can you possibly make everything fit? And without gaps that leave puzzles and projects incomplete? Or should one puzzle take precedence over the others?
Whether we want to or not, learning how to manage multiple projects is a necessity. Research with 220 project managers found 59% of PMs run two to five projects, while 15% of project managers run more than 10. That’s a lot of jigsaw puzzles.
Plus, research by Wellingtone in 2025 found that two of the top three most difficult PM processes to embed are resource management and project prioritization.
But prioritize and manage you must, if you want to achieve better client outcomes and a more profitable portfolio.
So how can you plan resources for multiple projects? What are the challenges? And how can you overcome them? Let’s go!
Project management is a complex game as it is. But when there are multiple projects running at the same time, the gains – as well as dangers – get multiplied.
When there are several projects and a limited pool of resources working on them, it becomes a juggling act. The team gets spread thinner and thinner as existing projects progress and new projects commence.
Initiatives get launched without the needed resources to maintain them, which often leads to each unit and everyone in it being involved in several initiatives at the same time, trying to keep their heads from spinning.
In a situation like this, common resource-related challenges often include:
Planning your resources and their capacity means that you know whether the people you currently have in the team have enough free time to start and finish the project you initiate. More often than not, a lack of insight into your resource availability makes it nearly impossible to do efficient resource allocation and gives room to false expectations as to when the project will get delivered and whether it will get delivered at all.
Assessing business risks is a common thing, but if you want to know how to manage resources across multiple projects, never forget about the risks associated with resources.
When doing capacity planning and resource allocation, think about things like people getting sick, taking paid or unpaid leave, choosing to resign from their role, or any other reason that might throw a spanner in your resource management plans.
Much as you would prepare mitigation strategies for a range of risks that could endanger your projects, resource risk need to be accounted for, too.
Continue reading: What is Resource Risk? A Visual Guide for Project Managers ➡️
Having to deal with lack or no real-time overview leads to project managers taking crucial decisions by flying blind. You need to do that human resource planning for a solid start and then regularly check for any possible changes to see if you need to do adjustments to get the project to the finish line.
But when project managers need to run all of that hustle in spreadsheets, they do not just waste productivity hours, but plan resources with no real-time data at hand.
In short, resource utilization stands for the amount of time your resources spend doing a certain task. If you have no documented utilization data to rely on when planning your resources for the upcoming projects, making accurate estimates of how many hands you will be needing and how to allocate them is problematic, to say the least.
Further reading: 5 Instant Benefits of Resource Planning for Any Organization ➡️
There are lots of traps in resource planning for multiple projects. But where there are traps, there are also ways around them. Here are some of the tried and tested ones:
The first step in planning resources for multiple projects is to understand what resources are at your disposal. This means having a resource inventory that includes the information you need to schedule them effectively and accurately, including:
This information is key to balancing workloads and project budgets, as well as delivering quality work on schedule.
Having this bird-eye view over all of your projects and available resources is the best way to plan well. For example, with all of your project and resource data being consolidated in one place, you can analyze your resource capacity at any given point in time and see who is free, who is full, and who is already at risk of burnout.
Next, you need to breakdown the workload for your multiple projects. Work out the phases, milestones, tasks, and deliverables for each project.
Check out our article on Work Breakdown Structures and how to create them ➡️
Don’t forget to calculate dependencies and the critical path – the sequence of tasks that have to happen in order for a project to progress. Any delay in the critical path will delay the entire project, and any others that depend on it.
When you’re managing multiple projects, resource clashes or conflicts are inevitable. To solve these effectively – for the benefit of the portfolio, not just individual projects – you need to know which projects should get access to in-demand resources.
Senior leaders can inform project prioritization decisions. For example, which projects are most strategically aligned, financially rewarding, or otherwise important.
Equipped with your project breakdowns and priorities, you can start thinking about the resources you need to deliver them. This includes:
Capacity planning is a key technique when managing multiple projects. It’s about understanding whether you have the right number and type of people available – when needed – to deliver projects on time.
It’s important because if you discover you don’t have capacity, you’ll need to take action. That could be requesting the business recruit more staff, or considering how to adjust your schedule to make projects more achievable (see project scheduling techniques for some creative ideas).
Once you start scheduling, you might find you don’t have enough people. In this situation, use placeholders in your resource schedule to indicate there’s a gap you need to fill.
Learn more: Getting Started with Capacity Planning ➡️
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There’s no way around this, it’s going to take time to schedule resources for multiple projects. You’ll almost certain make decisions that need revisiting when you understand their impact on other projects.
But with the right tools, techniques, and data to hand, you’ll have the visibility you need to make the best decisions for your overall program or portfolio.
Build your project timelines in appropriate project management or resource scheduling software to help visualize project schedules. This will increase schedule visibility and ability to accurately allocate people to projects.
When you’re scheduling, look out for resource risks to your project. These could include:
Bottlenecks – This is when lack of resources causes a delay in a project. One delay can snowball, disrupting the resource schedule for that project and others that use the same resources. It’s best to address these early in the planning process.
Utilization rate – This is how much of a resource’s capacity is scheduled with work. It may be tempting to aim for 100% utilization rate but that’s a mistake. Aim for 85% to optimize productivity with employee wellbeing.
Interlock meetings are regular check-ins between project managers and stakeholders to understand project progress, resource allocations, and any likely issues.
It’s an opportunity to gain visibility into the full project portfolio and organizational capacity, and make better informed resourcing decisions. This is especially important when research found one of the major problems project managers face is ‘not being given the most accurate information to work with’.
Our interlock report article is packed with tips on capacity and utilization calculations – it should be your next port of call.
Overbooking and double-booking your resources are among the first things to keep away from. Yet it is also the very problem that is more likely to take place in multi-project management. With a resource heatmap and a holistic resource pool view on the table, you will be able to allocate your resources wisely and even juggle them, if need be.
Finding a free resource planning tool for managing multiple projects is a great first step towards automating your resource planning processes. With a tool that matches your project needs, you will be able to reduce human error, collaborate efficiently, save time, and improve the overall grasp of where the project is moving and how likely it is to end in a bottle of champagne being opened.
Research suggests managers spend 54% of their time on admin. As crucial as it might be, you can substantially reduce the time you and your team invest into administrative work by having routine processes automated. Things like:
Poor communication can easily derail projects. And so it does, in 30% of the cases, a recent PMI report claims. Communicating with project team leads to get insights into their resource availability, allocation, and planning will put a life jacket on your business initiatives. Even more than that, it will give you a realistic image of what is doable and what is not so you don’t have to waste a minute planning a project that will never see the break of dawn.
In a situation where resource capacity is under pressure, it's crucial that that everyone involved is on the same page so that they can align their efforts based on what is most critical. Assess the urgency and importance of each project - clearly define objectives, deliverables, and timelines for each project, and make sure you're communicating this information with your team.
At all times, keep a close eye on project progress and resource utilization. Leverage project data to identify potential bottlenecks, risks, or dependencies across your projects. Real-time visual overviews of your project schedules, such as Runn's Project Planner, can be massively helpful in this respect: it's far easier to spot potential conflicts when all your schedules and timelines are visually represented in front of you.
Finally, acknowledge the fact that what you're doing is extremely complex; it may even at times be a source of great pressure and frustration. Building resilience - both at the individual level, and team resilience - is extremely important to help you get through the challenging days with a smile on your face and the motivation to seek creative solutions.
Make sure you're encouraging an environment with a no-blame culture: you want your people to be excited about improving their skills and applying lessons learned from previous projects, rather than being defeatist, dwelling on failures, and becoming resentful. Build psychological safety to encourage flexibility and innovation among your team members, so they can work together and find creative ways of managing resources and delivering successful outcomes in challenging times.
Resources are the lifeblood of any company, especially resource-intensive businesses in professional services and other sectors.
Effective resource management means projects are more successful – running on time and budget, delivering better outcomes and higher profit margins.
Managing multiple projects is the reality for these businesses and the hard-working PMs that schedule and oversee their work. To maximize business outcomes, it’s imperative that project and resource managers have the tools they need to do their job effectively and efficiently.
It’s why so many businesses like yours use dedicated resource management software like ours.
Plan a talk with Runn today to see how you can do smart resource planning for multiple projects, or read on to learn more strategies for success:
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