Glossary
Definitions of essential terms in project planning, resource allocation and capacity planning, in the context of professional services teams (agencies, IT services firms, consulting firms).
Resource allocation is the process of assigning team members to projects for a defined period, with an engagement rate expressed as a fraction of their daily capacity. In Orbit PM, allocation is represented by a value between 0 and 1 (e.g. 0.5 = half day, 1 = full day). The system automatically calculates the resulting occupancy rate for each team member.
Capacity planning is the management practice of anticipating the available working capacity in a team relative to the forecasted needs of upcoming projects. It involves comparing, over a given time horizon, the sum of planned allocations to the theoretical capacity of team members, in order to identify periods of overload or under-utilization.
Workload management refers to the real-time tracking of the volume of work assigned to each team member or team, compared to available capacity. In Orbit PM, workload is visualized with an automatic color code (green = normal load, orange = high load, red = overloaded). The goal is to balance the workload to prevent burnout of over-solicited team members and under-utilization of available profiles.
A project portfolio is the set of projects managed simultaneously by an organization or team. Portfolio management means having a unified view of all these projects, their allocated resources, their progress and their budget consumption. In Orbit PM, the portfolio dashboard displays consolidated KPIs for all active projects.
A Gantt chart is a planning visualization tool that represents project tasks as horizontal bars on a chronological axis. Each bar shows the duration of a task, its start date, its end date and optionally its progress. In Orbit PM, the Gantt chart is interactive and also displays resource allocations per team member overlaid on the tasks.
Staffing is the process of selecting and assigning the right people to carry out a project or engagement. It involves evaluating available skills, calendar availability and possible engagement rates to build the optimal project team. Staffing is particularly critical in IT services firms and consulting firms where consultants are assigned to multiple engagements simultaneously.
The utilization rate (or occupancy rate) is the measure of the percentage of a team member's capacity that is effectively allocated to projects over a given period. A rate of 100% means the team member is fully allocated. A rate above 100% indicates overload. In IT services firms and consulting firms, the billable utilization rate is a key profitability indicator.
The day budget is the envelope of person-days allocated to a project. It represents the total number of working days available to complete the project, across all profiles. In Orbit PM, the day budget is defined at project creation and automatically compared to actual consumption (the sum of daily allocations of all assigned team members).
The PMO (Project Management Office) is the organizational structure responsible for project governance within a company. The PMO defines methodologies, standards and project management tools, manages the project portfolio and ensures consistency across projects. In Orbit PM, the PMO benefits from the portfolio dashboard to monitor all active projects and allocated resources.
Overallocation occurs when a team member is assigned more work than their available capacity over a given period. For example, if a team member with a capacity of 1 full day is allocated 0.6 to one project and 0.7 to another for the same day, they are overloaded at 130%. In Orbit PM, overallocations are automatically detected and flagged in red in the allocation view.
An IT services firm is a company that provides information technology services to other organizations: consulting, development, integration, maintenance. IT services firms typically manage numerous consultants spread across multiple client engagements simultaneously, which makes resource management and capacity planning particularly critical.
Bench time refers to periods when a consultant in an IT services firm or consulting firm is not assigned to a billable client engagement. Managing bench time — anticipating unassigned periods and sourcing new engagements proactively — is a key operational challenge. Orbit PM's workload view lets managers spot upcoming availability before bench time starts.
Orbit PM natively implements resource allocation, capacity planning and workload management in a single SaaS software for agencies, IT services firms and consulting firms.
