Allocation on Completed tasks

[#1]

Currently when a planned completion date is later than the actual completion date, the demand allocation holds on to the planned completion date. The problem this causes is showing demand allocation to resources on work that is already complete. This may show a resource over allocated when in fact they have availability.

To avoid 'not real' allocations, we've asked our PMs to update their planned completion dates on tasks that are completed prior to the planned completion date. As you can imagine, they don't want to do this for a couple reasons 1) they have a lot of tasks in their projects and it would take time to do this and 2) they lose visibility to work that is getting done sooner than planned.

Ideally when a task is marked complete, the allocations past the date the task is marked complete would not allow for any more demand allocation on that task. Complete means complete and no more work will be done.

[#2]

Agreed. Our PMs are really wanting a more, realistic, ongoing view of allocations other than what was is initially planned.

[#3]

PMs want both; the ability to see what was originally planned and what actually happened. Unfortunately we haven't had success in using baselines to 'snap the line' on what was originally planned. We instruct PMs to update their plans to have a more realistic ongoing view of what's going on with their projects.

The concern here is about allocated time to work that is completed. Leads/PMs do not want to see people with planned allocated to them on tasks that are complete since it is presumed the work is done and the resource is now freed up to be assigned to other tasks. Holding the allocation on the completed task inflates the demand against our resources making it more difficult to resource plan.

[#4]

This seems (he says) pretty easy to do - they could probably just use the Actual Completion Date system field.

[#5]

Amen! This is a serious concern for our mangers and it renders the Resource Planner far less useful to our managers. They have an inaccurate view of their teams' capacity! They would like a correct and accurate view of their teams' capacity without having to be constantly edit task completion dates. Workfront is supposed to make capacity planning easier. It is currently not doing so.

As an addendum - when a task has multiple assignee any assignee who indicates that they are finished with their portion of the task should have their hours fall off the Resource Planner while the assignees who have not finished their portion of the task should not have their hours fall off the Resource Planner.

The Resouce Planner is so close to being truly functional and helpful for our managers, but issues like this prevent them from fully engaging with it because their spreadsheets are still more accurate.