Utilization

[CarolPe]

Hi. I'm looking for direction on how to create a utilization report. We are a creative services team made up of project managers, writers, editors, designers and myself, production. We are not a revenue generating business unit. However, we produce over 2,000 projects per year (print, digital, editing only, etc.). Utilization is extremely important to us. The utilization report needs to show utilization of an individual, by Role. And, utilization of each of our teams (writing, editing, design, production and project management). The utilization report would be generated at the end of each month. Our "old" system would produce a utilization report based on the “formula” of (per sample attached) Total Working Days for 2016 = 261 x 8 hours per day = 2,088 hours per year Calculation is total project hours worked per month, divided by total monthly hours, minus PTO taken. Any thoughts on how to produce a report based on the above? OR, any suggestions how to better capture utilization are welcome. Thank you.

[EricLu2]

Hi: Questions: Are you looking to change the way Utilization is calculated? Do you want utilization based on normalized hours per month (annual hours/12) or based on actual hours available to work that month? Do you want to exclude vacation time from available time? I think you do, if I’m interpreting your message correctly. How do you designate time spent that counts towards utilization versus time spent that doesn’t count to utilization. For example, travel time doesn’t usually count towards utilization. Would your people charge time in a timesheet to a non-project hour type of Travel Time? Does the utilization level vary depending on role? Do Directors have a 60% billable utilization target, but designers have a 95% billable utilization target? I certainly know how to extract the data and do this in Excel. The challenge is doing the math in text mode within WorkFront. Let me know if I understand what you’re looking for and let’s see what we can do… Thanks, Eric

[CarolPe]

Thank you Eric for getting back to me so quickly. I will follow up with answers to your questions tomorrow, Wed., 6/22 as I have to run into a meeting now. Have a good night. Carol Peck Senior Production & Process Director Creative Marketing Solutions Gartner Tel +1 203 316 6509 Mobile +1 203 979 3296 carol.peck@gartner.com

[DavidCo3]

Hi Carol, If you want a basic utilisation figure of how many hours a user had planned work vs their available hours for a given time period, then the "User Utilization" tool works OK. If you want to get more sophisticated (where Eric's questions are leading) then it won't do the job. You can fairly easily extract the available hours, planned hours etc from this area and then work out utilisation in Excel using pivot-tables etc based on Roles / Teams etc. Eric or I could give more guidance on how to do this if you like. I am hoping that Workfront's upcoming revisions to their scheduling and resource maangement functions will signifcantly expand the effectiveness of their user utilisation reporting so that we can do this within the system. 🙂 Cheers, David

[CarolPe]

Thank you David for your input. I will look into the User Utilization tool. Have a good day. Carol Peck Senior Production & Process Director Creative Marketing Solutions Gartner Tel +1 203 316 6509 Mobile +1 203 979 3296 carol.peck@gartner.com<BLOCKED:: gartner.com

[CarolPe]

Hi Eric, Please see my comments below in red regarding your questions. And thank you once again for your guidance on creating a utilization report. Carol Peck Senior Production & Process Director Creative Marketing Solutions Gartner Tel +1 203 316 6509 Mobile +1 203 979 3296 carol.peck@gartner.com

[StephanieSc1]

Hi Eric, chiming into this thread as Im also looking for a way to report out on our team's utilization, and I keep running into issues with the user utilization area of resource planninng. My goal- be able to see actual and projected utilization for members of our creative services team, for a given period time, organized by job role/level. I seem to be able to get a good idea or projected, but would like to see actual as well, even if timehseet hours were entered outside the planned timeframe of the task) Any guidance you can send would be greatly appreciated, and Im ok with doing some of this work in excel if needed. thanks! Stephanie WF System Admin sscherer@divcom.com

[EricLu2]

Hi Steph: Please select one of the following: 1) By utilization, are you looking to compare billable versus non-billable hours? 2) Do you mean you want to see, by role, what people with that role are working on (project-task) and how many hours have been planned and projected for that project-task combination? 3) Do you mean you want to see, by named user, what that person is working on (project-task) and how many hours have been planned and projected for that project-task combination? 4) Something different? The solution to number one is a report. The solution to number two is the Capacity Planner. The solution to number three is the User Utilization capabilities. Let me know more details, I’m sure we can do something… Thanks! Eric

[DavidCo3]

Hi Steph, In terms of working with Planned Hours, there are a couple of main approaches - both with their pros and cons. User Utilisation tool: Pros : Planned hours are distributed across each of the days in the time period. It gives you good overall % planned utilisation per day/week/month depending on how you want to zoom in or out. You can drill down on each person to see the projects they are on, and drill down again to the task level...very nice. If you want, you can enable (via the settings cog icon) to view the actual hours logged on the tasks, along with planned hours. Cons: You can't filter or group results based on task-level information (e.g. billable vs non-billable, or other task level codes you may use) You can't group users (e.g. to get sub-totals per team or role) - this is a pain! If actual hours are logged on tasks in a different month from the tasks' planned dates, then this actual time won't be counted in the resource grid. To change the data you have to close the screen, adjust the filters and then open it again and then maximise it again Task Reports (especially with matrix views): Pros: You can filter and group the results however you like, based on task-level information (e.g. billable vs non-billable, or other task level codes you may use) You can group the results by the primary assignee's and/or their team/location etc. Cons: If a resource is a secondary assignee, they won't show up on the task report. Planned hours are not spread out on a daily basis. They are grouped and totalled based on however you group the report. e.g. a 5 day task with 40 planned hours, will show 40 planned hours for the last day if you are grouping the results by planned completion - daily. Grouping by week or month is not so bad but it depends on the length of your tasks compared with the range of your report. If you want to group by Team Name or Group Name, you can achieve this via text mode for the Details tab, but you can't show the team name on a Chart! I have a ticket open about this at the moment but it looks like there is no option currently. So, what we are currently working on is an excel spreadsheet where we manually bring together available hours from the User Utilisation screen, with planned hours from Task Reports, and also some actual hours from Hour reports. It's time-consuming and has some irregularities but gives a better overall picture than using the User Utilisation report or Task Reports alone. I'll keep an eye on this thread in case others have better ideas! Regards, David