Having people assigned to every project does not mean an organisation has the capacity to deliver them all.
I think one of the mistakes organisations make when planning projects is confusing resource allocation with actual resource availability. A project gets approved, names are assigned to different roles, delivery dates are agreed, and everything looks achievable on paper. The problem only becomes obvious when execution begins, and the same people are expected to support several priorities at once.
Consider an organisation running five projects that all require input from the same business analyst, technical architect or compliance specialist. Each project manager may have included that persons involvement in their resource plan. Individually, the estimates look reasonable, but collectively, the commitments may exceed what that person can realistically deliver, especially when operational responsibilities, meetings, unplanned issues and competing deadlines are considered.
PM Solutions 2026 State of Project Management research found that 57% of surveyed organizations identified inadequate resource management capabilities as a PMO challenge. I think this deserves more attention because resource constraints are not always caused by an absolute shortage of employees. Sometimes the organization has enough people in principle but has committed the same limited capacity to too many initiatives.
This is where portfolio planning needs to be more closely connected to resource management. Before approving additional work, organisations should have a realistic view of available capacity by skill, role and delivery period, rather than relying on headcount or the assumption that someone allocated to a project will automatically be available when needed.
It also requires difficult prioritization decisions. When demand exceeds capacity, leadership must decide which initiatives take precedence, which can be rescheduled and whether delivery commitments need to change. Otherwise, those decisions are pushed down to individual project managers, who end up competing for the same resources while remaining accountable for deadlines they may have limited ability to control.
A fully allocated workforce is not necessarily an effective one. In some cases, pushing utilization too high leaves little room to absorb uncertainty, resolve emerging issues or accommodate the inevitable changes that come with delivery.
Perhaps we should pay as much attention to the capacity required to execute the portfolio as we do to the business cases used to approve it. When several projects need the same critical resource, who actually decides which project gets priority in your organization?
Good ideas get better in conversation.
