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Resource Managers and Traffic Managers

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Level 5
Hello fellow Leapers, What a great conference! I am interested in connecting with other Leapers and Workfront users whose role is same, equivalent, or similar to Traffic Manager and Resource Manager. Tammie
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Community Advisor
They didn't attend Leap this year but here's a few from my team! @Jessie Cheney , @Amanda Yohe , @Emily Norris Monique Evans Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.

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Level 6
Hi Tammie- my roll (for over ten years) has been "production coordinator" - but it's interchangeable with traffic/project manager. I have been acting as WF system admin for a year. always nice to have a group of people with similar situations to discuss solutions--especially about WF :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: Tegwyn Stockdale Production Coordinator / PM BayCare Clearwater, Florida Baycare Health System, Inc.

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Level 5
Hi Tegwyn, thank you for reaching out and I couldn't agree more with your sentiment. I'd love to have a pool of resources when I have role-based questions arise whether or not they're even Workfront-related. --Tammie Tammie Bouchard National Safety Council

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Level 5
Marketing and Creative environment is the scene. Working with multiple people technically having the ability to assign work to others is our conundrum. We're now expanding from Workfront Review & Approvals to Workfront Core simultaneously changing our structure, roles and processes (yes, what fun). For the first time I may be working in an environment where other people may have access to assigning/reassigning work to others -- even though that is still not their role (for us). My current question is three-fold. Does anyone know how to implement restrictions for Plan users that do not and should not assign others' work? How do those of you multiple project managers assigning work to the same resource pool determine priority and address assignment bias, conflict and overload? How do those of you who are Traffic or Resource managers within one of these environments with multiple project managers who also assign/reassign work/tasks to the same resource pool you manage capacity, manage resourcing, and manage forecasting? How do you know when someone else has changed an assignment in Workfront, and now the projected dates or the job health has changed and the capacity is out of whack? It is my understanding there are many, many companies that have multiple project managers (or other roles) assigning work to the same pool of resources; some of these organizations also have Resource or Traffic Manager or Coordinators. I am very curious how this works. Our project managers, campaign managers and even Creative managers are not responsible for assigning work and have not been able to do so. But now we're rolling out Workfront Core capabilities and I am informed there is no way to restrict our managers with Plan license from assigning or reassigning staffing resources. For decades I've worked in environments where there is either one person in charge of resourcing projects or alternatively, in a couple of organizations, the work was literally stacked and as staff became available they would take the next item in the pile- even those organizations had someone prioritizing the stack, tracking progress and metrics. Thank you in advance for your time and information. Tammie Tammie Bouchard National Safety Council

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Level 6
Tammie- please feel free to reach out directly --I am wanting to do the same with anyone using agile, preferably local so I can meet up. I am part of an in-house creative dept "agency" within a healthcare system. think this is all in my sig but email is tegwyn.stockdale@baycare.org and # is 727-433-2689 Teg Tegwyn Stockdale Production Coordinator / PM BayCare Clearwater, Florida Baycare Health System, Inc.

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Level 4
Hi Tammie, See my bullets in red below and feel free to reach out to me with any questions. Always happy to jump on a call to assist. 1. Does anyone know how to implement restrictions for Plan users that do not and should not assign others' work? I haven't tried this, but I believe under Setup, Access Levels you may be able to add this rule? I could be wrong.. You can make it a best practice and reinforce the fact that these Plan users are not to assign work. 2. How do those of you multiple project managers assigning work to the same resource pool determine priority and address assignment bias, conflict and overload? The Resource Scheduling Tool and Resource Planner Tool are excellent for capacity planning. I recommend if you are not using these tools, to try them out. Scorecards work for prioritizing projects along with the Portfolio Optimization that allows you to set priority for projects. We also have daily 15 minute stand up meetings for each Portfolio team and a weekly resource management meeting. 3. How do those of you who are Traffic or Resource managers within one of these environments with multiple project managers who also assign/reassign work/tasks to the same resource pool you manage capacity, manage resourcing, and manage forecasting? How do you know when someone else has changed an assignment in Workfront, and now the projected dates or the job health has changed and the capacity is out of whack? Same answer to #2. Workfront will be rolling out "What If" scenarios for schedule I believe by end of the year that will help with planning and prioritizing. You can set up notifications for when users change a assignments. Audit trail under each task for when someone changes the date. I believe you can create a baseline report to see the difference/changes Elliot Leson Synchrony Creative - The Studio (Company)

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Level 9
For what its worth, my agency chose to create Teams for our Art & Editorial users and we created an SOP where you must assign work to the Team and NOT an individual user. This allowed us to avoid the "assignment bias" issue you mentioned. Anthony Pernice Healthcare Consultancy Group

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Level 5
Hi Tammie, Agreed! Leap was great, went by so fast! Like @Tegwyn Stockdale , I'm also a production coordinator, with traffic & resource manager falling into my wheelhouse and I've been a System Admin for 8 months. Does anyone know how to implement restrictions for Plan users that do not and should not assign others' work? We do have multiple project managers using the same pool of creatives (my team), but only I assign the creatives. How do those of you multiple project managers assigning work to the same resource pool determine priority and address assignment bias, conflict and overload? Each creative reviews the requests and helps determine who can, or wants to, take on a project based on their schedule and interest. We do this in bi-weekly team stand-ups, and each day, individually. How do those of you who are Traffic or Resource managers within one of these environments with multiple project managers who also assign/reassign work/tasks to the same resource pool you manage capacity, manage resourcing, and manage forecasting? How do you know when someone else has changed an assignment in Workfront, and now the projected dates or the job health has changed and the capacity is out of whack? None of the project managers assign or reassign creatives, but the creatives are allowed to reassign between themselves if they need to shuffle projects. We went live in January, so we're just starting to get our Portfolios, Business Cases, and Scorecards set up. This will be a huge help! We're also looking into moving some (most?!) of our waterfall projects to an Agile/Kanban methodology. I'm interested to connect with anyone who's already done this and hear about their experiences. Regards! Sheri Whitten Gordon Food Service

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Level 6
I've been meaning to re-visit this post but have been buried since LEAP as I'm sure many of us have...so thanks for mention @Sheri Whitten :grinning_face_with_big_eyes: 1. Does anyone know how to implement restrictions for Plan users that do not and should not assign others' work? We have set up different access levels for people with Plan licenses depending what their role is. (ie: Production Planner - has to be able to convert and assign a template but no other admin rights) In the set up area you can make a copy of the standard "plan" access and change it to offer greater access (making a "group administrator") or less access. You can give them different view levels or management levels on many objects- this is where we control that. 2. How do those of you multiple project managers assigning work to the same resource pool determine priority and address assignment bias, conflict and overload? so, I'm not sure if this is typical...we are an in-house creative team...all of our creative requests are routed from a request que - both external and internal end up coming to our "creative production" team and WE convert - assign templates and assign copy/design/ mktg/vendor and set project in motion...unless there's a problem we don't deal with it again until it's approved and we take care of final deliverables and complete. (so in this circumstance we give PM role of "sponsor" to show ownership - but WE really own them) We determine who to assign by looking at a dashboard that shows design work ready to start (as a report) - copy ready to start etc....we can only really work this way due to volume...we can only control what is "with us". 3. How do those of you who are Traffic or Resource managers within one of these environments with multiple project managers who also assign/reassign work/tasks to the same resource pool you manage capacity, manage resourcing, and manage forecasting? How do you know when someone else has changed an assignment in Workfront, and now the projected dates or the job health has changed and the capacity is out of whack? SAME RESPONSE: None of the project managers assign or reassign creatives, but the creatives are allowed to reassign between themselves if they need to shuffle projects. we are not currently using any scorecards - resource management or business cases and I believe we went about setting up our portfolios a different way - kinda skipped over the programs part which we may need to backtrack on. We are testing Agile and Scrum now with one of our mktg teams...just on their side - not creative...we typically use a very linear task after task process. everything takes place in the schedule - all proofs and approvals...not ideal if you want to utilize proofHQ which we haven't - aside from marking up proofs. the agile team is working well but very new concept and my only concern is something brought up at LEAP as far as merging waterfall and agile and figuring out priorities. I have made myself an agile team (of one) and have started adding the WF tasks I need to complete there to get a feel and I gotta say it's kinda fun. looking forward to seeing more feedback - going to a scrum class next month so hopefully this will all sink in!! Happy Memorial Day! Tegwyn Stockdale Production Coordinator / PM BayCare Clearwater, Florida Baycare Health System, Inc.

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Level 1
I'm loving all of this conversation and wondered if anyone has created an SOP for the traffic manager roll. I was recently out of the office due to an emergency surgery and everything "backed up" because no one knew how to do my job. Job security for sure, but I don't like having all of this info. just in my head and no one else knowing how to do it in an instance like this. I realized that I REALLY need an SOP for how to do my job. Anyone have anything from a traffic manager's perspective? Jessica Wright Ariat International, Inc.

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Level 5
What do you use for resource planning and load balancing? Tammie Bouchard National Safety Council