Tracking Individuals Allocation and Capacity Across Multiple Projects

[Brett Stawinski]

Hello,

My company has a small team tha tworks on multiple projects, most of the inviduals in it have unique skills but for some there is overlap for a couple of positions. Management would like to be able to see which inividuals are overallocated but also plan allocation and resourcing. 

We are considering upgrading to Jira Advance to due to a need to be able to nest issues more than three levels for complex systems, so I was trying to work out if resource planning would be possible with Advance Roadmaps. since we would have that anyways and would prefer not have to upgrade our plan and add a plugin.

The parts I specicially am struggling with are:

1. It seems Advance Roadmaps looks at allocation and oversubscription at a Team level, but we need this at a User level since only certains memebers of the team can do certain tasks and work. For example, Carl CAD is 80% subscribed over the next month, and Jane Java is 120% subscribed is there a way to see each individual, otherwise the team just shows they they are 100% subscribed on average?

2.  Similarly, for Jane and Carl, next month we've assigned them tasks with estimates can I track allocation and capacity for future work to do resource planning?

3.  If they were to be doing the task over two months and to attribute half the estimate to them in each month (I have used months as an example but assume I'll have to set some sort of period)?  For example, is Carl is assigned an 180 hour task TASK-1 that he will do over two periods (2 months). Is there a way that would show his allocation accurately, I am worried if for the first month that he has 180 hours of TASK-1 to do, but all of the remaning work assigned to him for the month, which would mean he has 240 hours of work to do out 160 hours available, even though only 80 hours of TASK-1 should be for this period. If we have to limit a task to a certain period and then create another task we could, its just obviously not ideal and creating extra tasks for little value.

Thanks for any advice,

[RVS_Support · Accepted solution]

Hi @Brett Stawinski 

As mentioned Capacity Planning is not available out of the box.

As an alternative, you can try out our add-on.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1231411/capacity-planner?hosting=cloud&tab=overview 

The app allows to store the capacity for individual users and save as templates. which can be mapped to a sprint to track the allocation.

We are also adding new features to the app and any suggestions to meet your requirements are welcome.

Disclaimer : I am part of the team which developed this app

[Brett Stawinski]

Thanks Chella, the fact its free will defintely help get management on board.  Does it work with Scrum only to align with sprints, but not Kanban?  We could just align the sprints to the months so its not that much of an issue, but curious?

[RVS_Support]

Hi Brett,

Thanks for your reply.

We do have the plan to include Kanban boards as well in upcoming features.

Will update on this thread as soon as it is done.

Thanks

[Miron Ivano _Timescale_]

Timescale have the utlization on individual level, you can check it out:

[Nataliya Vasyliv_Reliex_]

Hi @Brett Stawinski

As was mentioned above, Atlassian doesn't support capacity planning at the individual resource level. 

If you consider using a plugin I would suggest ActivityTimeline. ActivityTimeline provides resource planning and availability on a timeline view. You can track tasks progress, workload, and availability for each employee taking into consideration the part-time, full-time, or even different work schemes for users, and holidays. Workload or availability could be calculated for individuals or teams on the same view.

There is an ability to plan your work with bookings and placeholders.

The additional modules provide numerous reports including timesheets reports. 

If you have any additional requirements please feel free to ask me. We can provide a demo session for you if needed.

Best, Nataliya, ActivityTimeline Team

[Mark Segall]

Hi @Brett Stawinski - Unfortunately, you are correct that upgrading to Jira Premium is not going to resolve this.  Advanced Roadmaps are focused on team outcomes rather than individuals because textbook Agile is about the team.  Of course, reality is not always so simple when you factor in budgets that create resource constraints such as your scenario.

I've found creating dashboards designed to view each team member's activity in the aggregate is the best course:

• Use the Created vs Resolved gadget based upon a filter like below to show how many issues they complete on average then use this as a guide to estimate future workload:

  • assignee = X AND resolved is not EMPTY

• Use the Filter Results gadget to view what they've been assigned by sprint or if Kanban, due date. This will give a view into how planning is going and based upon the above gadget allow you to adjust assignment/expectations accordingly

  • assignee = X AND sprint in futureSprints() AND sprint in openSprints()

  • assignee = X AND dueDate < startOfDay(n)

There are also some marketplace apps that can help with more robust reporting.

[Brett Stawinski]

Thanks for the feedback Mark.