Resource plan
A resource plan is the published view of who is working on what across a coming period, holding every person and every commitment in one place. Its purpose is shared sight: a lead should be able to see the effect of a change on somebody else's team before making it.
A plan differs from a set of allocations the way a map differs from a list of streets. The value is in seeing them together.
That is why the one-plan rule matters more than the format. Two leads each holding a private version will each staff the same person, and neither will know until the week arrives.
Freshness beats detail. A plan updated weekly and roughly right guides decisions. A beautifully detailed one that stopped being maintained in March actively misleads, because people still trust it.
The hardest habit is recording what changed rather than overwriting it. A plan that silently becomes the new truth teaches nobody anything. Keeping the shape of what was expected, beside what happened, is how a team finds out that it consistently underestimates one kind of work.
Who reads it decides how honest it stays. A plan seen only by the people who wrote it drifts towards what they would like to be true. Open it to the people it commits, and the corrections arrive from the person who knows their Thursday is already gone.
Where this shows up in PeopleMuster
PeopleMuster shows the plan as a timeline or a data table, grouped by users or by projects, so the same allocations can be read from either side.
Questions people ask
How often should a resource plan be updated?
Weekly for most project teams. Less often and it drifts from reality; more often and maintaining it starts competing with the work it describes.
Should the resource plan be visible to everyone?
Visible to everyone who staffs work, at minimum. Where people can see their own allocations too, the plan gets corrected by the people who know it is wrong.
What belongs in a resource plan besides projects?
Anything that consumes real hours: leave, holidays, standing internal commitments and support rotas. Leaving them out is what makes a plan look roomier than the weeks turn out to be.