Manage resources

Introduction

BigPicture comes in handy to balance the workload and avoid over and under-allocation of your resources.

Identify potential over and under-allocation of your resources

Prevent over-allocated resources

BigPicture is a great solution to balance the workload and avoid over and under-allocation of your resources. You can analyze the capacity and workload of individual resources and teams. The Resources module provides easy access to information about over/under-allocated resources. Using the Resources module, you can analyze:

• Workload - the amount of work already assigned to a resource

• Capacity - the amount of work a resource can perform

• Remaining Capacity - the difference between capacity and workload

Workload and capacity values can be expressed either in hours or story points. 

Different colors make it easy to see if you have met or exceeded an individual’s or team’s capacity:

• Green for under-allocation (workload less than 75%)

• Orange for moderate allocation (workload between 75-100 %)

• Red for overallocation (workload over 100%)

With BigPicture you can balance the workload directly in the Resources module:

• Change the assigned resource to a person who’s not overloaded

• Extend a task on the timeline, or

• Adjust the task start and end dates

Assignee

Many BigPicture features, like workload and capacity calculation, are done based on the assignee of a task.

The BigPicture assignee field corresponds to the first people column we find on a monday board (first from the left). If multiple people are in a column of monday board, the first person listed is considered an assignee.

• Gantt module - add the "assignee" column and use inline editing to add/change the assignee.

• Resources module - to change the assignee:

  • move a task to a different swimlane (using drag-and-drop) or

  • open the task details pop-up and change the assignee

Estimates

You can use estimates to plan your work, track progress, and manage workload distribution. BigPicture lets you use the Original Estimate (hourly) and Story points.

To use estimates, add columns to your monday boards:

• Original Estimate - automatically mapped to the first “Number” type column to the left, containing one to the phrases: “original estimate”, “original”, "planned effort" or "planned hours".

• Story Points - can be mapped in App Configuration > General > Fields (remember to first add a story points column (numbers type) to your monday boards).

BigPicture needs values to do calculations. Fill in the estimate fields of your tasks.

Once you have added the estimation data, you can start working with the Resources module. Make sure to adjust the view to match the needs of your analysis:

• "View" menu lets you select what is shown on a timeline below

• "Effort mode" changes what the calculations are based on

• Aggregation can be changed in the "scale" menu

• Make sure to navigate to the right spot on the timeline

Skills panel

Skills help you manage the workload. You can easily match tasks with resources (and teams) based on what is required to complete a task and who has the needed abilities.

You can select the skills at the task level. The related effort is used to calculate the skill demand and is evenly distributed over the task's duration. The skill demand will be displayed in the Resource module's Skill panel. First, you need to:

• Define the skills

• Add skills to users

• Add the skill widget to your monday board

• Select the required skills at the item level

Find the perfect match

The feature suggests the best-suited assignees available for the job based on their capacity and defined skills. This way, you don’t have to look for an assignee manually. 

Monitor capacity and distribute workload with BigPicture

Most PPM tools don’t allow their users to manage resources on the portfolio level. This can cause organization-wide problems and hinder successful capacity planning or resource allocation. Fortunately, a handful of tools support portfolio-level management of resources. BigPicture helps you monitor capacity and distribute workload across the whole organization.

You can manage all resources from a single place. That includes every project and program located in the portfolio. Think of it as a management command center. Combining resources from all projects and programs allows for more comprehensive and easier allocation and monitoring.

See the video:

Resources panel (Gantt module)

The Resources panel in the Gantt module allows for a comprehensive check of how much work has been assigned. The numbers in color-coded bars show the workload assigned to a given person.

Workload vs capacity thresholds

When a resource has no assigned tasks, then no workload is displayed. The workload can stand as follows:

• with less than 75% of the capacity, the bar turns Green (under-allocation)

• between 75% and 100% of the capacity, the bar turns Orange (moderate allocation)

• over 100% of the capacity, the bar turns Red (overallocation)

Effort mode

With a rule in mind, the effort has to be evenly distributed over the duration period. There are three effort modes to choose from:

• Original estimate - the mode to show planned workload versus the resource capacity.

• Remaining estimate - the mode to show workload history (spent time), and the remaining workload versus the resource capacity.

• Story Points - 1 day equals 1 story point.

Original estimate

Original estimate mode is used during the planning phase as the original estimate of time tracking applies. Assignees are assumed NOT to start logging the work yet.

Remaining estimate

The remaining estimate mode applies to monitor the project’s execution, as the remaining estimate of time tracking is used. The remaining effort is evenly distributed starting from the current date.

With the mode selected, the remaining duration is evenly distributed over the remaining duration of the task, starting from the current date and the spent time is evenly distributed over the past duration.

Story points

The story point mode allows monitoring of the project’s execution. Just make sure the story points value has been chosen for tasks.

Aggregation mode

With BigGantt, the workload shows the aggregated values in the following intervals:

• Daily

• Weekly (a week counts from Monday to Sunday)

• Monthly

Manage and allocate resources directly in the Gantt module

The Gantt module in BigPicture comes with a dedicated space to manage and allocate resources. The Resources panel lets you preview how much work has been assigned. You can keep an eye on a list of resources along with the capacity and workload status of the respective person.

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Manage resources across the whole organization with the Resources module

The Resources module in BigPicture is fully dedicated to resources. It is not only for checking and managing all your resources’ absences, holidays, and workload but also for assigning and re-assigning tasks to your resources. You can easily prevent overallocated resources by rescheduling a task or reassigning it to another person. If you want BigPicture to suggest the particular resource for allocation based on their skill set and remaining capacity, use the Find Perfect Match option.

With the Skills panel, which is part of the Resources module, you will know how much skill-related effort you need for all the tasks you have planned for a particular period.

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