SUM of task values at Project Level?

[amyb35793975]

Hello! I would like to create a task-level custom form to capture points on the Fibonacci scale (vs the Hours scale currently used in Workfront). Then, I’d like to roll the # of points from all the tasks into a total at the Project level. I’m struggling with finding a solution to this. There are a couple of older discussions around similar functionality, and there didn’t seem to be a solution at the time of their writing. I’m wondering if this is possible now?

Does anyone know if Workfront plans to expand its Agile capabilities to include using actual points (based on effort) instead of points that equate to hours?

Thanks in advance,

Amy Billmayer

Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Hi Amy,

I invite you to consider our UberCalc solution, which is designed for precisely this kind of aggregate and store at a higher level requirement. Once the aggregated data is in place, you can then use in a myriad of other ways, such as sorting parents, calculating % vs parent, highlighting children (in red) that are less than the average of the parent, etc. On the Agile side, the closest I'm aware of is the recent improvement to add Small, Medium or Large Work Estimates you recently mentioned, but at this time, there does not appear to be any further development in that area.

Combining these two ideas, though...

I've recently been mulling over the concept of treating abstracted Work Estimate (e.g. T-Shirt size being the classic example) as if they were a different time currency. The concept of a currency exchange, whereby at any moment in time one currency can be converted to another as Things Change is well established, and -- with my Finance background, unavoidable -- it strikes me as inevitable that at some point, whatever unit of measure is being euphemized for convenience / obfuscation, it must at some point translate to time.

Following that logic...

I'm further imagining an "exchange rate" for time (and -- gasp -- perhaps even maintaining it within the the available but often unused Exchange Rate feature within Workfront) to set up a translation of T-Shirt Sizes to Hours (e.g. Small = 2 hours, Medium = 4 hours, Large = 8 hours, etc.). With that data then available (and noting that it could be expanded to include the Extra Small and Extra Large concepts you'd proposed, and that the actual "rates" could change over time), UberCalc could consult the current exchange rate, calculate the appropriate hours, and store them in the appropriate place within Workfront to thereby then take advantage of the many aspects of Resource Planning that are based on that universal currency of time...including our Resource Contouring solution, which we could even adapt to show using T-Shirt icons, instead of hours, if that is more useful to those doing the planning.

I (and I suspect my colleague @Kyle Silberbauer - inactive‚, with whom I've been Blue Skying on such matters) would be interested in your (or anyone else's) thoughts on whether this sounds like a road worth travelling, either here on this post, or via email at doug.denhoed@atappstore.com

Regards,

Doug

[amyb35793975 · Accepted solution]

Thank you @Doug Den Hoed‚ - this all sounds very intriguing, but we just don't have the $$ in our budget for this.

I was able to find another solution though. I built a report with a Matrix grouping:

Row Groupings:

Project >> Name Task >> Name

(Filtered by tasks that Can Start)

Column Groupings:

Parent >> Name

(the equivalent of our Milestones)

and I set the Matrix settings to Show Value Column and Voila!!

I get the Fibonacci totals for each task and the SUM for each "Milestone", as well as the overall SUM per team. It works pretty slick, I just wish I was able to rearrange the values under Parent:Name to reflect the correct order in which we do our work (right now it's alphabetical).

Hope this can help someone else who is looking for a similar solution!

Amy Billmayer

Allianz Life

[kynabaker16]

Thank you for sharing your solution, Amy! This is very helpful!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

No worries Amy; glad you got it going!

From a sorting perspective, perhaps if you sort by Task Number, and or use this technique that Jill and I worked out (on video), you can get even closer to what you need.

Regards,

Doug

[amyb35793975]

This solution is amazing - thank you for sharing. However, we use many different templates with varying numbers of tasks based on the type of deliverable.

Thanks!

[Doug_Den_Hoed__AtAppStore]

Our pleasure Amy,

Since having many different templates is the norm, rather than duplicating the report for every template of interest, I suggest you add a template prompt to it, and change the title to include " (TIP: choose ONE template for best results)", which will then keep the results focused, relevant, and skinny.

Regards,

Doug