When setting up your Forecast account, it’s important to define how you manage resources. Understanding the resource management setting, Allocate people to projects, how it works, what it includes, and its impact across the platform will help you make smarter decisions, boost efficiency, and get the most out of Forecast.
This article covers:
- What is Allocate people to projects?
- How to allocate people to projects
- Understanding resource utilization using project allocations
What is Allocate people to projects?
Allocate people to projects is one of three (3) resource management settings that defines how you assign team members' time to projects, view the heatmap, and calculate utilization in Schedule People, Timeline, Scoping, and Reporting.
Allocate people to projects also includes the features of Capacity Planning such as Hard/Soft Allocations and Placeholders.
- Assign team members’ time to projects
- Interact with People Schedule
- View, manage, and report on resource utilization
- Plan out future resource demand with Capacity Planning
Choosing Allocate people to projects does not require you to create or manage individual tasks. You may create and assign tasks to your team, however tasks are not considered when calculating resource utilization.
How to allocate people to projects
Once a project has been created, you need to identify the resources who will be responsible for completing the work. There may be times you might not know the full scope of the work required, but you do know the roles and team members you will need to complete the work.
Using Allocate people to projects you can:
- Identify the team members needed on a project
- Allocate time for the project using hard allocations
- Manage tentative project bookings with soft allocations
Learn how to work with project allocations in:
Managing allocations requires permission. To ensure your team has the appropriate access, review the following resource:
Understanding resource utilization using project allocations
Allocate people to projects controls resource utilization across all platform pages including:
-
- People Schedule
- Timeline
- Scoping
- Reporting
- Capacity Planning
People Schedule
People Schedule is a visual representation of time allocated to your team members. The heatmap displays project time allocations, or bookings, for resources identifying when a resource is under, over or fully booked. Tasks created in projects are not included in a resource's utilization or displayed in the heatmap.
The heatmap calculates utilization based on:
- The amount of project time allocated over the duration of the allocation; and
- The working hours assigned to an individual team member
For example:
- A resource's working hours are defined as 8h per day Monday through Friday.
- The resource is allocated 20h of project time for a given week.
- The heatmap evenly distributes the total time for the allocation over the duration of the allocation, or 4h per day.
- An allocation's distribution can also be set manually, allowing you to allocate more time to one day versus the others.
Non-project time allocations, like internal time and time-off, are also managed through allocations. Time-off allocations directly affect a resource’s availability and the distribution of their project hours. With both project and non-project time clearly outlined in People Schedule, you get a complete view of your resources, helping you maximize utilization and performance.
For more about People Schedule and how time-off impacts resource availability check out:
Timeline
Timeline is available in each project and is a visual representation of the project's phases including any tasks that may have been created, it's allocations, team members and placeholders. Placeholders are project-specific and created in Timeline.
Within Timeline it is possible to:
- Review and schedule work for individual projects
- Assign tasks based on availability
- Determine the resources demand
- Create placeholders
Learn how to make the most of Timeline and Allocate people to projects in:
Scoping
Allocate people to projects also provides valuable insights on the project’s Scoping page.
While project tasks don’t need to be created or assigned for Allocate people to projects, and tasks aren’t factored into resource utilization, you might still want to create tasks within a project and assign them to specific team members. Project allocation time will appear in Scoping based on the allocations made in People Schedule or Timeline using the Availability Meter.
By enabling Availability Meter and grouping by person, you’ll see a gauge for each resource showing their total allocated project time. As you create tasks and add estimates, the gauge updates to reflect the remaining allocation time for the resource.
- How to use Availability Meter in Scoping is explained in Defining your project scope.
Reporting
Resource utilization is a metric that helps you understand resource performance and effort over a period of time.
Resource utilization:
- Measures your team's productivity
- Identifies if you are under or overutilizing resources
In addition to the visual representation of resource utilization in the heatmap, Forecast offers the standard Utilization Report to help you drill down into the details of your team, their allocated project time and non-project time.
As long as project time or non-project time is allocated in the schedule, it will appear in the Utilization Report.
- Learn more in Overview of Utilization Report.
Capacity Planning
Capacity Planning is a feature available for the resource management settings, Allocate people to projects and Both project allocations and task assignments.
With Capacity Planning, you can:
- Create and manage Placeholders
- Represent future resource demand for projects
- Build out your project pipeline
Having insight into current and future projects in addition to resource and role demands will help you determine where you may be understaffed, overstaffed or if and when you can confidently take on new projects.
- For more information on Capacity Planning with Forecast, see About Capacity Planning.
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