Anyone who has ever planned team capacity knows this situation: a project is ready to start, but the people you were counting on are already committed somewhere else. Planning the work is only half the job. Understanding who’s available to do it is the other half. And making sure the right people are available at the right time is where things become complicated.
With OpenProject 17.7, we’re introducing integrated resource management to help teams plan work based on people’s availability, skills, and working hours. Rather than relying on a separate planning solution, these capabilities become part of the same platform teams already use to plan and deliver projects.
The upcoming release introduces the new Resource management module (Enterprise add-on). Within it, teams can create one or more Resource planners for different planning scenarios. In addition, users on all OpenProject plans will benefit from improvements to user management, including departments, user attributes, and working hours with availability tracking. Together, these capabilities lay the foundation for more realistic capacity planning across projects.
In this article, you’ll learn:
- Why resource management becomes essential as projects grow.
- Who is available? Understand your team’s workload with the Resource planner.
- Who should do the work? Plan work for people or the skills you need.
- Who can fill the remaining gaps? Match open requests with the right people using Staffing.
- How departments, user attributes, and working hours create the foundation for realistic planning.
- What’s already possible with OpenProject 17.7, and what’s coming next.
Dica
People are more than resources. Still, we’ve named this feature Resource management because it’s the term most organizations know and search for when looking for this type of solution. You’ll also see us use “capacity planning,” which better reflects our perspective that planning is ultimately about people and their time.
TL;DR: What’s changing for resource management in OpenProject 17.7
OpenProject 17.7 introduces integrated resource management to help teams plan work based on people’s availability, skills, and capacity.
Included in the Community edition:
- Organize users with departments and an organizational structure.
- Track user attributes such as job titles, key skills, and languages.
- Define working hours, future schedule changes, and time off.
Available in the Premium Enterprise plan:
- Plan work with the new Resource planner, offering four different planning views.
- Allocate either specific people or the skills and roles you need.
- Match open resource requests with suitable project members using Staffing.
What becomes possible with resource management at OpenProject
Planning a single project is challenging enough. As soon as several projects compete for the same people, planning becomes a different kind of problem.
Most project management tools help teams answer one important question: What needs to be done? As projects grow and compete for the same people, another question becomes just as important: Who can actually do the work, and when?
Many Jira teams answer that question with Marketplace apps such as BigPicture or Tempo Capacity Planner. Other organizations rely on standalone work management platforms with capacity planning features or even spreadsheets to understand who is available.
OpenProject takes a different approach by integrating resource management directly into the same platform teams already use to plan and deliver projects.
The idea for resource management emerged during a customer migration project. While replacing a Jira setup, the team realized that resource management in Jira is typically provided through Marketplace apps rather than the core product. This reinforced OpenProject’s goal of delivering integrated resource management capabilities as part of the platform.
It’s no surprise that Multi-project resource management is one of the most-requested features in our Community, with 187 votes from users. OpenProject 17.7 is our first step towards helping teams answer these questions without relying on separate planning tools.
To make these new capabilities more tangible, we’ll follow a fictional example throughout the next sections.
Planning work with OpenProject’s Resource management module (Enterprise add-on)
Within the new Resource management module, teams can create one or more Resource planners to plan work within their projects. Resource planners help teams allocate work packages to project members while taking their work schedules, skills, and availability into account.
We’ll now follow Nadia, a project manager at a mid-size agency who has just taken on a new client project. Her team’s departments, user attributes, and working hours are already set up in OpenProject, so she can focus on planning the work ahead.
Understand your team’s workload with the Resource planner
Nadia has just taken on a new client project. Before she can commit to a delivery date, she needs to know whether her team actually has the capacity. One developer is already supporting another customer, the designer is on vacation next month, and QA only joins shortly before the planned release. Looking at work packages alone doesn’t answer the question she’s trying to solve.
With OpenProject’s new Resource planner, project managers like Nadia will be able to switch between four planning views depending on the question they’re trying to answer: a work packages timeline, a users timeline, a work packages list, and a users card list. Each view presents the same planning data from a different perspective.
The following examples illustrate two of these views.
Work packages timeline
The work packages timeline focuses on the work itself. Planned allocations are displayed directly alongside work packages, making it easy to see what has already been scheduled, where capacity has been assigned, and which work still needs to be staffed.
Image: The OpenProject Resource planner offers four planning views that help teams understand workloads and identify work that still needs to be staffed (in development, subject to change before release).
Nota
Resource planning relies on users’ work schedules. The warning icon indicates that no work has been planned for this work package yet.
Users card list
Sometimes the question isn’t “What work is planned?” but rather “Who is available and who has the right expertise?” The users card list brings together key information such as departments, work schedules, spoken languages, key skills, and current utilization, giving planners a quick overview of the people behind the work.
Image: The users card list provides an overview of team members, their expertise, and their current availability for planning work (in development, subject to change before release).
Nota
Already using the OpenProject Team Planner? The new Resource planner complements OpenProject’s existing planning capabilities. While both features support planning work, the Resource planner introduces resource allocations, staffing, and capacity planning based on working schedules. The Team Planner remains available in OpenProject 17.7.
Allocating a person or the skills you still need
Now that Nadia understands her team’s overall workload, she can start planning the work itself. Some work packages already have a clear owner. Others don’t. She knows she’ll need someone from QA before the release, but she doesn’t yet know who that will be. At this stage, knowing the role and skills she needs is often enough.
With OpenProject’s resource allocations, users like Nadia will be able to assign either a specific person or define the skills, roles, and attributes they are looking for. Planned work can be distributed across several people and scheduled ahead of time. This allows teams to reserve capacity even before they know exactly who will carry out the work.
Image: Creating a resource allocation for a specific person or based on the required skills and attributes (in development, subject to change before release).
Staffing: Turning open requests into real assignments
Nadia has finished planning most of the project. One request is still open: Laboratory testing requires a German-speaking QA engineer, but she doesn’t know yet who will take on the work. Instead of assigning a specific person herself, she creates a resource request based on the required skills and availability.
OpenProject’s Staffing view helps resource managers and team leads review open resource requests and match them with suitable project members. Requested skills remain visible until someone is assigned, making it easier to keep track of staffing gaps and complete the planning process without leaving the Resource planner.
Image: The Staffing view matches open resource requests with suitable project members based on the defined skills and attributes (in development, subject to change before release).
The foundation behind resource management
Planning is only as good as the information it’s based on. Before teams can realistically plan work, OpenProject needs to know who is available, what skills they bring, and how they’re organized.
That’s why OpenProject 17.7 introduces more than just the new Resource management module (Enterprise add-on). It also includes several improvements that provide the foundation for realistic planning, many of them available in the free Community edition.
Departments and organizational structure
Resource planning starts with understanding who belongs where. OpenProject 17.7 introduces departments as a built-in organizational structure, making it easier to organize users across your company. Departments are displayed throughout OpenProject, including in user profiles and hover cards. Organizations using LDAP can also synchronize their department structure with OpenProject (Enterprise add-on).
Image: Departments can be organized in a hierarchical structure to reflect your organization’s setup (in development, subject to change before release).
User attributes
Knowing who belongs to which department is only one part of the picture. Resource planning also depends on understanding what people do and which skills they bring.
With OpenProject 17.7, organizations can define user attributes such as job titles, key skills, and spoken languages. These attributes are available throughout OpenProject, including on user profiles and hover cards, making it easier to identify suitable people when planning future work.
Image: User attributes such as job title, spoken languages, and key skills help teams identify the right people for upcoming work (in development, subject to change before release).
Working hours and availability: Planning with realistic capacity
Resource planning only works when it’s based on realistic availability. Someone working 40 hours per week isn’t necessarily available for 40 hours of project work. Meetings, internal responsibilities, or support tasks all reduce the time available for planned work.
OpenProject 17.7 introduces work schedules that can be managed either by users themselves or centrally by administrators, depending on the configured permissions. Teams can define individual work hours, see the history of past work hours and even schedule future changes in advance, for example when an employee increases their working hours from 36 to 40 hours per week (see screenshot below).
Additionally, an availability factor can be used to reflect the time that’s actually available for project work:
“We introduced the availability factor because a person’s work hours don’t necessarily reflect the time that’s actually available for project work. Meetings, administrative work, and other recurring activities reduce that capacity. By default, the availability factor is set to 100%, so effective work hours match the configured work hours.” – Klaus Zanders, Senior Software Engineer, OpenProject GmbH
Resource allocations are compared against these effective work hours, helping planners identify potential conflicts before work is assigned.
Image: Working schedules combine work hours, future schedule changes, and an availability factor to calculate a user’s effective capacity for project work (in development, subject to change before release).
Key takeaways and Outlook
OpenProject 17.7 marks the beginning of integrated resource management in OpenProject. By bringing together project planning, people, skills, and availability in one platform, teams can make more informed planning decisions without relying on separate planning tools like BigPicture or Tempo Capacity Planner.
With OpenProject 17.7, teams can:
- Plan work before assigning people. Reserve capacity based on the skills you need, even before you know who will take on the work.
- Share work across your team. Plan who contributes when and for how long. Nadia can plan that Aleksy spends two days on the prototype, Anke takes over later in the week, and Susanne joins for laboratory testing before customer acceptance, all based on their individual work schedules.
- Plan with real availability. Take working hours, time off, and effective capacity into account before committing work.
- Keep project planning and resource planning together. Manage projects, people, and capacity in one platform instead of relying on separate planning tools.
With these features, OpenProject 17.7 lays the foundation for future planning capabilities built on resource allocations, working schedules, and project data. As always, we’ll continue developing resource management based on your feedback after the release.
If you’re already using OpenProject, we’d love to hear how resource management / capacity planning fits into your process. And if you’re evaluating alternatives to Jira and its Marketplace apps, OpenProject 17.7 offers a fully integrated approach that keeps project planning and resource planning together.
