Resource Tracking and Planning

[Rajesh K]

I have a 10+ member team involved in multiple projects. Using filters I can see if a member has tasks or planned or in-progress. However, I want to move further and would like your guidance.

1) What plugin can efficiently track and/or generate reports on the time each member spends on tasks?

2) How can I do resource planning with the team? for example, how can I know if I can assign a member to a new project in 2 weeks?

I saw "Capacity Tracker" and "Temp Planner: Resource Planning" plugins. Can these help?

Regards, Rajesh

[Benjamin Horst]

Hello @Rajesh K ,

this is a question that lots of us try to solve. 

There are a couple of Add-Ons that might work for your tasks. I will split them in your 1) and 2:

1)  The "track" part is already done by Jira if colleagues are using the Time Tracking feature thoroughly. There's Apps that ease up working with Timetracking by adding easier to access buttons or autmatical logging depending on status. But I haven't used those. As for the reporting part here's a few suggestions: 

• We are using Pivot Report for this in some projects. It offers powerfull reporting options if your issues are assigned and have worklogs. If you don't use time tracking, this App won't help you much. And you might get a coffee addict if you always catch a new one when you are waiting for the first index of your new search :)
• There's Tempo Apps as well. I have seen it work quite well. But I'd only recommend it if you are focussing heavily on Timetracking/Ressource Planning/Budget Planning. Very powerfull Apps there but needs some time to understand it and it's rather pricy.
• If you don't want to spend money, you can set up a Dashboard and use a filter on the Time Tracking of your colleagues. Use JQL, add all projects your colleagues work with and filter the tasks that you want to report over. You can do it per month. I used a three dimensional filter for a rough report like this a couple of years ago. Worked well for what we needed. But I currently can't find the 3D-Filter App we used.

2) At first hand this is not a Jira issue. It depends on how you plan your work. I personally think you should be able to plan your work and not your ressources. Go to your teams, bring your priorized backlog and ask them part of the work they can achieve in the next two weeks. Let them commit to what they estimate. And if it doesn't work do retrospectives and check why it didn't work out. Took the User Stories longer than estimated? Did you put too many Stories into the two week window? Did an employee get ill/switched team etc.? Did unplanned tasks hit your team? ... And so on.   

Of course you will need data for that process on what the team achieved previously and what worked out and what did not. You can use Apps like Advanced Roadmaps or the Big Picture to plan your ressources and/or work. It's possible with aformentioned Tempo apps as well. 

But these Apps all work differently and have strenghts and weaknesses. You'll have to clarify your way of work before you can chose a tool for it.
There's a german video talking about Big Picture vs. Portfolio/Advanced Roadmaps. Maybe you can find an english one, too.
If you have a rough picture of what you need, I'd start with one these two. 

[Ostap Zaishlyi _Reliex_]

Hi @Rajesh K

That's a good question.

You can check ActivityTimeline: Plan & Track Resources app, it has Resource planning & tracking features that will allow you to see the availability of your resources.

You can also generate Timesheet reports to see how much did the resource spend on task/project/component/etc, as well as you can get Planned vs. Actual Report to compare the original plan vs. the actual execution.

Hope this helps,

Kind Regards