A shared specialist is needed by two projects on the same day. Who decides?
Contested scarce capacityEscalate the choice to the authority responsible for cross-project priorities, using the consequences of each option. Do not leave the specialist to make a hidden portfolio decision.
What to do now
- Confirm each project's actual need
- Identify possible resequencing
- Compare consequences of the conflict
- Obtain an explicit allocation decision
When to escalate
Escalate when
Neither project can resolve the conflict within delegated authority.
Who decides
The resource owner and project manager
Example
The portfolio owner assigns the specialist to the higher-consequence milestone and revises the other plan.
Mistake to avoid
Booking the specialist first and treating that as strategic priority.
Prevent a repeat
Review overload and bottlenecks at the person or skill level before adding more commitments.
Suggested ApprovedFlow setup
- Resources
- Tasks
- Timesheets
Compare available capacity, assigned task work and actual recorded effort using the enabled resource and timesheet views. See the platform
Related cases
- How do we manage equipment shared by several projects?Nonhuman resource conflict
- How can we forecast staffing before every task is known?Early capacity uncertainty
- A shared environment is unavailable during our test window. What are the options?Environment capacity conflict
- Two projects claim the same resource savings. Who reconciles the portfolio?Portfolio benefit overlap