Trying to introduce resource planning and scheduling into our use of Workfront, but...

[kjdf0017]

As we continue our journey in Workfront, we are now looking to introduce the latest features of Resource Planning and Scheduling, however we have to change several ways we were managing our tasks. The use of our TimeSheets is very popular as well as our My Work and several yearly tasks are assigned to team members allowing them to associate time to team meetings, status meetings etc. easily. The problem comes when we open up Scheduling and want to assign the Unassigned project tasks to the appropriate team members. With all these year long or several months of tasks they cloud the scheduling calendar. How do others manage these types of tasks and what is best practice to still enable ease of time entry for team members? Thank you in advance!

[JosephCa]

Kevin; Remember that Duration will hold the Task assignment for the year, but that Planned Hours holds the resource to allocate them to a Task. If you set the Task to 0 hours Planned Hours, they can log actual hours that will impact allocation but won't be held in reserve for the Task. You could also consider creating a Hours Type for general or project work that is available from the Timesheet that User books meetings, ect to, but doesn't impact allocation in advance! Join me on LinkedIN

[EricLu2]

Hi: Here is an idea. We create a support demand plan that models the percentage of time people spend doing work that isn’t easily modeled in a project plan. Some people are allocated (Calculated Work) 10%, some 100%, depending on what their role is. Then, we create plans that model work - but we can’t predict if/when people will be doing that work. This includes work to provide production support and specific ad hoc work, like meetings. We do not plan hours for people to do this work, because the plan for that time is found in the Support Demand Plan. People do, however, charge time in their timesheet to these support plans/tasks/line items. That way, we see the demand for their ad-hoc labor through the support demand plan, and we know where they actually spent their time by looking at their timesheets. Over time, we compare the amount of time charged to support/ad-hoc labor and the allocation in the support demand plan. We adjust it to align with a couple month running average. That improves the accuracy over time. Does that help at all? Thanks, Eric

[kjdf0017]

Hi Joe, Thanks for the quick reply! We had done what you highlighted in your first suggestion, however this still blocks out the scheduling for each user that is associated to the task, however the second suggestion actually might be what would work best for us in this particular scenario and allow the ease of entry for our team. Thanks a bunch!

[kjdf0017]

Hi Eric, This is very interesting as I can see how this would apply to a large area of our maintenance portfolio whereby we have our Client Support team conducting maintenance activities and our Web Content Developers who maintain our sites with regular updates which is covered under our maintenance budgets. I will work with my team to try and test out what you have described and see how well it fits. Thank you!

[EricLu2]

If you would like more details, or want to see what a Support Demand Plan looks like, or a Support Plan, let me know, but contact me directly eric.lucas@crowley.com< Thanks! Eric