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Planning - managing allocations

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Overview

Allocations indicate the amount of time or percentage of available hours a resource is dedicated to a project, considering their skills and availability. The distinction between hard and soft allocations allows for clear understanding and flexibility, aiding project managers in making informed decisions. Allocations in Birdview are visually represented on a Gantt chart, which helps to visualize and manage resource utilization throughout projects.

Scheduled hours vs. Allocated hours

Scheduled hours = assignments. A commitment of resources to project tasks in the project schedule. Task level agreements. A project manager is usually responsible for setting scheduled hours.

Allocated hours = bookings, reservations of resource capacity. Hard or soft allocations of resources to a project. Project-level agreements. Bookings represent organizational concepts for teams so that they can understand how resources will be engaged across various projects. A resource manager is usually responsible for setting allocated hours.

In an ideal world, the sum of the bookings for a resource will equal the sum of the resource's assignments across one or many tasks. However, the real practice of project management doesn't enforce this agreement.

Soft vs. hard allocations

Soft allocations are tentative reservations of a resource for a specific project, but that resource remains allocable to other projects until a resource manager makes a final decision. When soft allocations are used, the resource's capacity isn't consumed and is available to other projects, but the resource is added to the project team.

Hard allocations are used when a resource manager wants to firmly allocate and reserve a resource for a project. The resource is automatically added to the project team, and the resource's capacity is consumed by the amount of time that's allocated to the project.

Allocations in Birdview

The following attributes are required for adding allocations:

  • start and end dates
  • total allocated hours or allocation percentage

Allocations are based on available hours that a resource has in accordance with Company schedule and their own personal weekly schedule. Public holidays aren't included in available hours.

An allocation is visually represented as a bar on the Gantt area of the Resource Planning screen and is colored depending on its type.

- soft allocations

- hard allocations

- allocations of unnamed resources

An unnamed resource can only have soft allocations.

Each bar shows an allocation percentage and the total number of hours allocated to an unnamed resource or a user.

Allocation.png

Manage allocations

To add/edit hard allocations, the "Manage hard allocations" global permission is required.

There are two ways to add allocations:

  • using the keyboard + mouse in the Gantt area
  • using Add allocation wizard in the grid area

Using keyboard + mouse

  1. Place the cursor at the starting point on the Gantt area within the line corresponding to the resource you are going to add an allocation for.
  2. While holding down the Shift key, click the left button.
  3. Without releasing the Shift key, drag the cursor to the right before you reach the endpoint of the allocation. Don't fear to make a mistake, as you will be able to edit the allocation at any time.
  4. Release the button.
  5. As the Add allocation wizard opens up on the button release, you can add finishing touches to the allocation.
  6. Adjust, if required,
    • the start and end date
    • allocation percentage or total allocated hours (bidirectional arrows sign  indicates that the value on either side is in direct correlation with the other)
    • type of allocation - soft or hard.
  7. Click Save.
Multiple allocations can be added to the same project.

Using Add allocation wizard

  1. Hover over the resource you wish to add an allocation for and click the More actions button.
  2. Click + Add allocation.
  3. Set
    • the start and end date
    • allocation percentage or total allocated hours
    • type of allocation - soft or hard.
  4. Click Save.

Edit and delete allocations

To edit or delete allocation just click on it. Once the Edit allocation wizard is opened, it is possible to update the allocation or fully delete it.

Wizard.png

Auto-generated allocations

In Birdview allocations can be auto-generated. The main condition for it is the availability of scheduled hours.

The Generate allocations action is only available for resources who have scheduled hours on some activities. This means the resources need to be assigned to activities with start and end dates and estimated hours set. If no scheduled hours are associated with the resource, the action will be disabled.

Generate allocations.png

The Generate allocations action will create allocations for weeks with scheduled hours assigned with no existing allocations for that week. If an allocation already exists for a given week, the action will skip that week to prevent overlapping allocations and ensure that the Generate allocations action doesn't cause duplication.

For each suitable week, a soft allocation will be created with a total minutes value equal to the scheduled hours for that week. If two or more consecutive allocations have the same minutes-per-day value (with a small tolerance), they will be merged into a single allocation.

For instance, suppose we have the following pattern of scheduled hours by week:

The following allocations will be created:

Note that the from weeks 1 to 4 allocations were merged into one. To avoid any gaps in the schedule, allocations are created for the entire week, including weekends, irrespective of the company's "Treat weekends as workdays" setting.

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