Help Resourcing!

[KarenRu]

Hi All, We're about 1 month into our WF implementation. It's a little rocky- but we're learning as we go. One of the major reasons we switched systems was to have better visibility into resourcing for our designers. We always seem to be in a traffic jam! I know WF has the tools, and we may have to wait until we can fully utilize the tools, but I'm curious how others handle resourcing. I'm trying to give our creative director a better view into what her team is working on now and next week. I know there are alot of ways to get at this- but they feel a little all over the place. The way we work now- is we have a custom form on our projects- and there is a field called: Design Assignment. When a PM needs a designer assigned to a project (not at the task level- just saying- this designer will work on this project)- they choose DESIGN TBD from a drop down. This then pulls into a report on the creative directors dashboard, and she monitors all projects with a DESIGN TBD, and then assigns a designer from the drop down menu. All this does- is tell the PM who the designer is on the job, and then PM is responsible for making the bulk assignments in their tasks(schedules). I understand this isn't utilizing the resourcing tools just yet..... The problem we're running into- is giving the creative director the proper visibility into all the design workload-BEFORE she assign the designer....couple reasons for this: it's hard for the pm's to keep up w/the ever changing schedules....so the info in the system- isn't always up to date??? Any thoughts on this? tks! Karen

[LauraRa1]

Hi Karen I do indeed have thoughts on this. We are now into our 6th month and have been through this issue and you’ll be glad to hear have a fairly good solution. We have created our ‘ZZ’ people. These users are per team (we’re IT based) for example, ZZ Architecture Design. We ask project owners to assign tasks to these people rather than to the team or a role. This then enables us to see our allocation by team in the User Utilisation tab and Resource Grid for each team. The team manager will then reassign the work to an individual as needed. Hope this helps. Laura Ray Project Support Analyst Bakkavor Information Systems Bakkavor Group West Marsh Road, Spalding, Lincolnshire, PE11 2BB, UK Direct: +44 (0)1775 763 010 www.Bakkavor.com // Laura.Ray@Bakkavor.com< [cid:image001.png@01D2401F.FA78A4A0]

[AnthonyIm]

Resourcing... a fun topic. First I do want to say that you should look at the new scheduling in EA or your preview sandbox and test it out. We have had a lot of good feedback from our RMs about it. Now, every resource manager we have likes to do things a little differently so I'll give you some examples: Let Laura said, we have two RMs that use "fake people" so that they can see the unassigned tasks in the Resource Grid or User Utilization tool. So if my Health Project Manager needs a developer, they assign Health Developer Person to the task. (All our fake people have Person as a last name) For some it is just a basic list where they select a time frame (we have Today, Next Week, Next 2 Weeks, Next Month). It is an assignment report that is grouped by Project and then Assigned To and where the filter is Assignment Role ID equals whatever they are incharge of. That way the Resource Manager can see all work that needs to get done for the projects in that time frame and what has been assigned and what has not yet. Some like to departments like Studio or Editorial just use the team functionality as there work is not really planned in advanced (we are working on it) and no matter how much comes through it needs to get done so they like getting the team requests and picking up the work. The RM then is just monitoring all the work that people have and can reassign things she sees fit. We also have two agencies now that just have their PMs pick the people they want for a project and the RM montiors the workload and projects and is in communication with the Creative Directors to see if those are the best people. Like I said, tons of different ways to do it. I tend to base it on the RM so we do have several different options but I wanted to make their lives easier not force them into doing something the way I'd like it. But like I said, we have had some great feedback with the new scheduling tool so I would recommend playing around with that. (Although the fake people approach does not work that. You have to go back to the job role option.)

[KarenRu]

Thanks Anthony! good to hear that it's varied, so I'm not far off. I'm going to play around w/the resource tool. Have your folks gotten into contouring hours yet? I think that's going to be super helpful! Karen

[KarenRu]

thanks Laura! helpful to hear how others do it. tks Karen