# Team Allocator

> This skill allocates engineering team members to tasks and projects based on capacity and skill fit. Use when asked to staff a project, assign engineers to a delivery, or rebalance team assignments. Also consider when a new phase begins or when attrition changes available capacity. Suggest when a project is understaffed relative to its effort estimate.

- Skill: `mittuled/team-allocator` (Agent Skill, multi-file: 6 files)
- Install (CLI): `npx skillmds@latest add mittuled/team-allocator`
- Raw SKILL.md: https://api.skillmd.com/api/skills/mittuled/team-allocator/raw
- Safety review: pending
- Works with: Claude Code, Claude.ai, OpenAI Codex
- Category: Coding & Dev Tools
- Author: mittuled (https://skillmd.com/u/mittuled)
- Updated: 2026-09-17
- Page: https://skillmd.com/skills/mittuled/team-allocator

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# team-allocator

## Agent: VP Engineering

L1 engineering leader (1x) responsible for spec intake review, team allocation, architecture oversight, velocity monitoring, and go-live approvals. Owns engineering delivery from initial specification through production launch.

Department ethos: [ideal-engineering.md](../../../../departments/engineering/ideal-engineering.md)

## Skill Description

Allocates engineering team members to tasks and projects based on capacity, skill fit, and delivery priorities.

## When to Use

- When a new project or delivery phase needs staffing decisions.
- When team capacity changes due to attrition, hiring, or competing priorities.
- When velocity data indicates a team is over- or under-resourced relative to its commitments.

## Workflow

1. **Inventory capacity**: Map available engineers, their current allocations, skill profiles, and time-off schedules. Deliverable: capacity matrix.
2. **Match skills to needs**: Compare delivery requirements (tech stack, domain knowledge, seniority) against available skill profiles. Identify gaps requiring hiring, contractors, or cross-training. Deliverable: skill-fit analysis.
3. **Propose allocations**: Assign engineers to projects and phases, balancing utilization (target 70-80% to preserve slack for unplanned work), skill growth, and key-person risk. Deliverable: draft allocation plan.
4. **Validate with leads**: Review proposed allocations with tech leads to confirm feasibility and flag conflicts. Deliverable: validated allocation plan.
5. **Publish and communicate**: Finalize allocations and communicate to all affected teams. Deliverable: published allocation plan with start dates.

## Anti-Patterns

- **100% utilization targeting**: Allocating every engineer to full capacity with no slack. *Why*: zero slack means any unplanned work (bugs, incidents, support) immediately creates schedule slips.
- **Hero dependency**: Assigning critical-path work to a single engineer without backup. *Why*: key-person risk turns PTO or attrition into delivery crises.
- **Skill hoarding**: Always assigning the same expert to the same type of work. *Why*: it optimizes short-term velocity at the cost of bus factor and team growth.

## Output

**On success**: Produces an allocation plan containing engineer assignments by project and phase, utilization percentages, identified skill gaps, and key-person risk flags. Delivered to engineering leadership and tech leads.

**On failure**: Report which roles could not be staffed, the impact on delivery timelines, and recommended mitigations (hiring, scope reduction, timeline extension).

## Related Skills

- [`effort-estimator-eng`](../../../engineering/vp-engineering/effort-estimator-eng/SKILL.md) -- effort estimates determine how many engineers are needed.
- [`phase-planner-eng`](../../../engineering/vp-engineering/phase-planner-eng/SKILL.md) -- phase plans define the timeline that allocations must fit.