Resource management tool: Plan and move projects with confidence
A resource management tool shows who on your team is working on what, who has room for more, and what shifts when you move someone. Asana is resource management software built into the place your team already works. Because assignments live on the tasks themselves, your view of who's available stays current.
Why allocating people gets harder as projects multiply
Nobody can see who’s actually available
A new project needs a developer in three weeks. Finding out who's free takes a day of messaging project leads and checking last week's spreadsheet. When availability lives in people's heads, the work goes to whoever answers first.
People get committed twice, and nobody notices
Each project books people independently, so nobody adds up the totals. Two leads each claim half of a designer's time, then a third asks for something "quick." She's at 130% before anyone notices, and the deadlines she misses start to look like a performance problem.
Reassigning one person quietly breaks three plans
Moving an engineer onto an urgent project is the right call. It also pulls them off two other projects, and those leads don't hear about it until milestones slip. One reasonable decision becomes a chain of delays nobody approved.
How Asana works as a resource management tool
In Asana, every task has an owner, a due date, and an estimate of the effort it takes. The resource management features build your staffing view from those details, so project resource management happens where your projects already live. Here's how that plays out.
See who’s working on what, across every project
Need a developer in three weeks? Just open Workload. It shows each person's assignments across all their projects on one timeline, from this week out to next quarter, and you can filter by person or project. Workload pulls from the tasks your team is already working on, so you don't need a separate allocation sheet or a day spent asking around.
Catch double-booking before it becomes a missed date
Give each person a weekly capacity and each task an effort value, in hours or points. Workload sums it up across all projects and shows you when someone goes over. Rough estimates are enough to show who's overloaded. You'll spot the designer at 130% while it's still a scheduling fix, before it turns into a conversation about why her work is late.
Reassign work and see what moves with it
When an urgent project needs your engineer, drag their tasks to a teammate or a new date right in Workload. You'll see how the change affects everyone's capacity before you commit, and Timeline shows the dependent work that moves with it. The leads on those other projects see the new owner and due date on the task, so nobody finds out from a missed milestone.
Report on allocation across teams and portfolios
When leadership asks why your team needs another hire, show them. Portfolios and reporting dashboards roll allocation up across projects and teams, so you can point to where people are stretched and where there's room. There's no separate report to build first. Together, these resource management tools give you the numbers for a hiring request, or for saying no to the next project.
Purpose-built for the teams that decide who does the work
Staffing looks different depending on who's doing it. Here's how teams use Asana project resource management software.
![[Team - Agency] Hero Image](https://assets.asana.biz/transform/bd8fb516-1527-40d9-a49d-1978e69c189e/-16_9-Hero-Agency-Lo-Fi?io=transform:fill,width:2560&format=webp)
![[Teams - Os] PMO Intake (image)](https://assets.asana.biz/transform/52e2b46b-6cdf-41f7-bb18-e20cd55b27fb/ops-pmo-intake-mid-fi?io=transform:fill,width:2560&format=webp)
Every project in a single view
When utilization is your business model, one idle consultant or wrong assignment shows up in your margin, and the staffing spreadsheet is out of date by Wednesday. Asana puts every client project in one view, so account and delivery leads can staff each engagement against who's actually free. With the timesheets and budgets add-on, you can also separate billable hours and see how time tracks against each budget.
Asurion improved capacity planning and reached 89% team utilization with Asana
Asurion is a global technology care company serving more than 300 million customers. Its 1,100 people across training, content, media, and innovation teams use Asana to track utilization and bandwidth in real time, so managers can see who's available and where work is piling up. Projects now start 37% faster.
![[Case study] Asurion (share image)](https://assets.asana.biz/transform/7fd36f72-23bf-4f93-b431-a631334123e5/WEB-JPG_Customer-Story_Asurion?io=transform:fill,width:2560&format=webp)
Asana has completely changed the way our design team works. We now have full visibility into priorities, timelines, and workloads, which has helped us deliver higher-quality work faster—and with less burnout.Mike Evans
Sr. Manager Multimedia, Asurion
Know who’s free before you promise the work
The next time a project needs two people, you can skip the round of messages to project leads. Just open Workload, see who has room over the next few weeks, and check what else would shift if you moved someone.
Frequently asked questions about resource management tools
A resource management tool is software that tracks how your team's time is committed across projects and shows who has room before you assign new work. Unlike a spreadsheet, it updates as plans change and totals each person's workload for you. In Asana, that view is built from the updates your team already makes to their tasks, like reassigning work or pushing a due date.
Most teams use spreadsheets, dedicated scheduling tools, or a work management platform. With the first two, the staffing plan lives apart from the project plan, and you have to copy every moved deadline or new assignment over by hand. In a work management platform like Asana, the staffing view updates on its own whenever a task changes.
Resource management decides who does what work and when. Capacity planning looks at how much work your team can take on before you commit to it. You need both to make a good staffing call, and Asana supports both, including capacity-planning software to size up what your team can absorb.
You can track resource allocation across multiple projects by rolling every person's assignments into one view. But that only works if the work lives in one place. In Asana, each task carries an owner, dates, and an effort estimate, and Workload totals them per person across every project they're on.
You don't need a separate resource management tool if your team's work is already in Asana. Allocation comes from the assignments and effort on real tasks. A dedicated professional services tool can still make sense if you need deep billing, invoicing, or financial resource planning.
With the Advanced plan, you get Workload for $24.99 mo./per user, billed annually. Upgrade to Enterprise and you can see workload across your whole organization and plan your team's capacity. Neither requires a separate resource management add-on. See Asana pricing for the full breakdown.
The allocation view is only as accurate as what's in it. You don't need perfect estimates, though. Rough effort on the bigger pieces of work is enough to show who's overloaded. Start with hours or points on your largest tasks, then refine as you learn how long things actually take.
Yes. Allocation rolls up across projects and Portfolios, which lets an operations or PMO lead see the whole organization instead of one team at a time. When one team is stretched and another has room, you can move work between them.