Choosing resource planning software and planning capacity realistically

Updated on 6 November 2026

Which projects can your company actually deliver with the people available? Resource planning software brings together project requirements, working hours, absences and the skills needed. It helps you identify bottlenecks and gives you a shared basis for decisions about new initiatives.

Choosing a solution therefore means looking beyond a clear task list. What matters is whether the software reflects how your organisation works: concurrent projects, different working patterns, day-to-day operations and effort that cannot yet be estimated precisely. This article explains which requirements to assess and how Can Do supports them.

When resource planning software becomes worthwhile

A simple overview may be enough for a small team handling a few tasks largely independently. Planning becomes more demanding when several projects need the same specialists. Every commitment must then account for obligations to other projects.

Typical warning signs include frequent discussions about who is available, conflicting utilisation reports and new projects whose staffing needs are only assessed after approval. Even someone who appears to be free may not be suitable if they lack a required skill or are unavailable during the period when the work needs to be done.

Multi-project management considers these dependencies across several projects. Resource planning provides a shared view of requirements and availability. The people responsible still decide which initiatives take priority.

Seven criteria for choosing a solution

Use a product demo to test specific situations from your organisation. The following criteria help reveal differences between solutions.

Weight these criteria according to your working environment. Skills and bottlenecks across projects are particularly important for organisations that share specialists. Where several locations are involved, working time rules and regional calendars deserve additional attention.

Working patterns underpin availability

Contracted working hours are not automatically available in full for projects. Reliable planning accounts for individual working hours, annual leave, public holidays, other absences and day-to-day work. Using the same weekly figure for everyone can conceal these differences.

In Can Do, working patterns are stored as employment contract records in the system and assigned to employees for the relevant period. Examples include 20 hours per week without a predefined daily distribution, fixed days off or half working days. Temporary changes can also be represented, such as someone reducing their hours for six months. Can Do adjusts the capacity model accordingly.

The stored rules can also cover annual leave entitlement and carry-over. Once countries and regions have been configured, the relevant public holidays can be imported automatically.

Account for annual leave before dates are agreed

Annual leave that has not yet been scheduled still affects available capacity over the year. Can Do automatically includes the recorded annual leave allowance in its simulation. If a person is fully allocated to a project for a week, the simulation assumes no leave during that week and accounts for the remaining entitlement later. This is an assumption for assessing capacity, not a decision about specific leave dates.

When someone requests leave, approvers can immediately see how the requested absence would affect project progress. Sickness, by contrast, is recorded when it becomes known. If this causes overload or other adverse effects on projects, Can Do shows them in real time.

When choosing a solution, look beyond whether it offers a leave calendar. Ask to see how it distinguishes between leave entitlement, unscheduled leave and recorded absences, and how it connects that information with project requirements.

Include day-to-day work as a baseline workload

Customer enquiries, internal coordination, tickets and recurring tasks are all part of work. Allocating all working hours to projects leaves no room for them. Planning every such activity individually, however, would often require too much effort.

Can Do lets you specify allowances for different baseline activities as percentages, hours or days, usually for a defined period. For example, someone might reserve 20 per cent of their weekly working hours for sales support. The algorithms account for this requirement alongside project work, even before the individual activities are known.

Recording time spent on baseline work also lets you compare assumptions with actual effort and improve your planning. Review the baseline workload regularly and avoid counting the same activity again as project effort.

A practical example: assessing an additional project

A company wants to start an additional project. It requires 60 to 80 hours of a particular skill during the period under consideration. Two employees are potential candidates.

The following fictional example is a simplified hours calculation for a defined period. The deductions do not overlap. It does not reproduce the calculations used by Can Do or Watermodel®.

Together, they have 56 hours remaining. Even if both have the required skills and their free time can be used when needed, the new requirement exceeds availability by at least 4 hours, rising to 24 hours if the work takes 80 hours.

However, the total does not answer the whole planning question. Some work may be needed on specific dates, tasks may depend on each other, or only one person may have the required combination of skills. Even sufficient total capacity would therefore not, on its own, prove that the plan is feasible.

In Can Do, users do not have to calculate this hours balance themselves. They record requirements and capacity, then schedule the work. The algorithms account for working patterns, absences, baseline workloads and existing commitments. Where estimates are uncertain, Can Do assesses possible planning scenarios and shows overload risks in real time. A specific risk percentage cannot be derived from the simplified table.

This gives decision-makers concrete options: delay the project start, change existing priorities, adjust the scope or schedule additional suitable support. Each alternative should be assessed for its impact on other projects.

Plan skills and available time together

Free hours only help when the right skills are available. Resource management and skill management therefore complement each other: one considers capacity and utilisation, the other suitability and skills development.

In the early stages of planning, requirements in Can Do can be recorded as skills, roles or allocations to a department. A specific individual does not yet need to be identified. Can Do already simulates feasibility at this level.

For a skill requirement, the software considers people with the required skill or combination of skills. It checks whether a suitable person can take on the work or whether suitable people can share it. If no suitable allocation is possible under the recorded conditions, Can Do issues a warning. Project managers can request a forecast showing which employees have sufficient capacity for the planned work.

Existing skills and proficiency levels can also be documented and compared with future requirements. This provides a basis for training, recruitment or external support.

Refine high-level reservations step by step

An allocation does not have to be made to an individual work package. Can Do also supports planning at the level of a project or its phases. For example, 200 person-days from a department can be reserved for a phase while the allocation to individual employees remains open.

When work packages are subsequently planned beneath it with named employees from that department, Can Do automatically deducts their effort from the higher-level generic allocation. This avoids counting the same effort twice. As planning becomes more detailed, specific allocations progressively fill the high-level reservation.

Ask to see this relationship in a demo using a departmental reservation and the work packages beneath it. The key is to keep the capacity view consistent as the plan becomes more detailed.

Account for uncertain estimates and concurrent work

At the start of an initiative, dates and effort are often uncertain. Can Do also processes estimated durations and effort, such as 60 to 80 hours. These estimates are included in the capacity assessment from the outset and can be refined as more information becomes available.

Work packages are planned as objectives with estimated effort and an intended time period. A team member might, for example, have one to two weeks to complete a task. How they organise their work within that period remains up to them.

Watermodel® simulates possible combinations in real time to assess how employees can complete concurrent tasks within the intended periods. Can Do uses this to assess feasibility and calculate overload risks. Decision-makers see the risk values and decide whether to accept or adjust the plan. The assessment is based on the recorded data and constraints.

As work progresses, progress updates and time records feed into the assessment. If it becomes apparent that overload prevents someone from spending enough time on a work package and puts the objective at risk, the software flags the conflict. This allows the plan to be reviewed during delivery as well.

Use AI to find suitable alternatives when bottlenecks arise

If the preferred person cannot complete the planned work within the intended period, Can Do's AI helps find other suitable employees. Before displaying suggestions, a background simulation checks their capacity across the company's projects. It suggests people who have sufficient capacity for the task according to the recorded plan.

Watermodel® assesses how concurrent work might be organised; AI supports the search for alternative people to assign. Project or department managers review the suggestions and decide who will take on the work.

The product page on resource and skill management in Can Do provides further insights.

Coordinate planning across several projects

The same available capacity must not be promised independently in several project plans. Resource planning therefore needs a shared, current view across all relevant initiatives.

Project management directs an individual project. Multi-project management considers shared resources and the effects that projects have on each other, among other aspects. Portfolio management adds the overall selection and prioritisation of initiatives. The capacity view provides an important basis for this, but does not replace decisions about a project's business value.

Ask your provider how changes can be traced across these views. A change to a date should be assessed not only in the affected project but also wherever the same specialists are already scheduled.

The data and responsibilities you need

Resource planning software needs a maintained foundation of data. This includes the relevant employees and teams, their working hours and absences, ongoing projects, estimated effort and the skills needed for planning.

Agree who maintains this information and when changes are recorded. Even the best analysis is of little use if a significant absence or an additional project commitment has not yet been entered.

Integrations can support data transfer. Which information is imported from other systems depends on the configured connection. Can Do also lets you analyse directly recorded project time and imported time entries against the plan. Before implementation, clarify which system remains responsible for each type of information.

Five tasks for your product demo

Ask the provider to walk through a manageable use case with you:

1. Create two employees with different working patterns. Check the effect of unscheduled annual leave, a recorded absence and a regional public holiday.
2. Reserve time for day-to-day work and schedule the same people on two concurrent projects.
3. Add a skill requirement with 60 to 80 hours of effort. Then refine a higher-level departmental reservation into work packages and check the automatic deduction.
4. Check the impact of a date change or an absence, and ask the provider to explain the conditions that possible alternatives depend on.
5. Clarify which data needs to be maintained or connected, and who decides on changes to the plan.

This helps you assess whether a solution fits your actual planning challenges. A demonstration of features alone says little about how well it reflects your work.

A shared basis for realistic commitments

Resource planning becomes more reliable when working hours, absences, day-to-day work, skills and project requirements are considered together. With concurrent initiatives in particular, it is important to recognise the effects of changes early and assess alternatives using the same data.

Can Do brings these perspectives together in resource and skill management. Use your own example to assess which requirements matter most to your organisation and how the software can support your planning.

Book a personal Can Do demo