Resource Calendar in Project Management – Definition and Meaning
A resource calendar is a specific type of calendar that documents the working times and availability of individual resources or resource groups. It is used in project time planning to accurately reflect the actual availability of required resources (e.g. employees, machines), including non-working times such as weekends, public holidays, vacation periods, planned maintenance, or specific shift schedules and part-time arrangements.
Example, best practice, and further information
A project’s resource calendar might, for example, indicate that a particular team member is on vacation for three weeks in July and therefore unavailable for project work. A best practice is to keep resource calendars up to date and to factor them into scheduling and resource planning. This aligns with the recommendations of resource management in the PMBOK Guide as well as the need for realistic planning in agile environments, helping to avoid scheduling errors due to incorrect availability assumptions and to optimize resource utilization.