Overview
Resource planning is a critical component of efficient project management and organizational success. One of the key features that facilitate effective resource management is the ability to group resources strategically. The Planning tab allows you to group your resources in three primary ways:
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By Project: ensures that the right people are dedicated to the right projects, enhancing project efficiency and reducing potential conflicts over resource allocation.
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By Resource: ensures that resources are utilized optimally and that employees are engaged in projects that align with their skills and availability.
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By Job role: enables managers to view the distribution of job roles across projects and identify any imbalances. It also helps in workforce planning, ensuring that the right mix of job roles is available to meet the demands of various projects.
How to use it
Group by Resource is a default grouping on the Planning tab. In order to apply other groupings, navigate to the Resources tab in the left-hand menu. Then, select the "Project" or "Job role" option from the "Group by" drop-down menu located in the upper right corner.
Group by project
When the tree is in a collapsed state, the list of projects with their timelines is displayed.
An expanded project row displays project members who are assigned to the project or activities inside of this project. Being on that view, you can start creating soft or hard allocations for your resources as well as observe resources' scheduled hours and create allocations based on them. To read more about allocations, refer to Planning - managing allocations.
Group by resource
When the tree is in a collapsed state, the list of resources (both users and unnamed resources) is displayed.
In expanded mode, the resource's projects and vacations are displayed along with allocations. You can create and modify allocations and vacations, as well as add resources to projects.
Group by job role
When the tree is in a collapsed state, the list of job roles is displayed.
The counters beneath a job role name indicate the number of users and resources with this role assigned.
On the screen's right side, you will notice the job role usage or supply. This information is presented through histograms, which visually represent the workload distribution as a series of colored bars. An allocation histogram is displayed for each job role row if there are allocations created for specific users and/or unnamed resources.
The gray dashed line across each chart indicates the 100% utilization mark, i.e. capacity threshold.
The colors of the bars help to spot problems with resource allocation immediately:
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No capacity for unnamed resources or users. A dashed line is displayed all the time |
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Users are fully loaded = 100% users utilization |
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Users are underloaded = 50% users utilization |
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| Users are overloaded = 150% users utilization | |
| All capacity is allocated to an unnamed resource = 0% users utilization | |
| 100% users utilization + work is allocated to unnamed resources | |
| 50% users utilization + work is allocated to unnamed resources | |
| 150% users utilization + work is allocated to unnamed resources |
When you hover over any column in the bar graph, an informational tooltip will appear, providing details about the existing supply and the required demand for the specified job role.
The first line in the tooltip always displays the Job role capacity, showing the total supply for a specific job role within a selected period of time. In the screenshot above, the capacity is 176 hours, indicating that DevOps Engineers can take on tasks for a maximum of 176 hours from November 1st to November 30th.
The next section of the tooltip shows the demand for unnamed resources and users.
In this example, 176 hours of work are allocated to unnamed resources, while an additional 176 hours are assigned to users with the DevOps Engineer job role. The Total demand line sums up these two demands (176 hours + 176 hours = 352 hours).
The capacity of an unnamed resource is taken from the company schedule settings (Company settings > Account settings > Company schedule). That is, the capacity of all unnamed resources is always the same.
The Remaining user capacity shows how many more hours we can allocate to users. In this example, it is 0 hours, which means that the users are fully loaded with work. This line changes its colors depending on the calculations.
| Users are fully loaded. They have 0 hour available | |
| Users are underloaded. They can take X hours more | |
| Users are overloaded. It is worth delegating X hours to someone else |
The Remaining total capacity is only displayed for cases when there is work for unnamed resources. It also serves as a clear indicator for resource managers whether their resources are capable of completing the job in a certain period of time or if the company is facing resource-related problems.
An expanded job role shows the list of unnamed resources and users assigned to it, with colored bars indicating their workload.