What is the difference between allocated work and planned work (practically speaking)? From what I understand, planned work is the estimated no. Of hours needed to get the job done in an almost perfect world. The allocated work though is the allocated hours based on resources and contraints. For example, a project task can be accomplished in 2 days (16 hours). So, 16 hours is the planned work. Let's say, we are understaffed and we can assign Resource A who can work on it for 8 hrs and Resource B for 3 hours due to limited availability. Then, 11 hours is the allocated work. Is this right? How are these two used in the real world?