Assigning People to Tasks

When setting up your Forecast account, it’s essential to define your approach to resource management. Understanding Assign people to tasks, how it works, what it includes, and its impact across the platform will enable you to manage your project pipeline more effectively.

This article covers:

• What is Assign people to tasks?
• How to assign people to tasks
• Understanding resource utilization using task assignments

What is Assign people to tasks?

Assign people to tasks is one of three (3) resource management settings that define how you assign team members to projects, interact with Scoping, view the heatmap and calculate utilization in Schedule People, Timeline, and Reporting.

Choosing Assign people to tasks does not allow you to create project allocations. You identify the resources responsible for completing the work of your projects by assigning team members to tasks. Non-project time allocations are available to manage internal time and time-off.

Assign people to tasks also includes additional settings for time management. Choose how time registrations impact the resource heatmap in People Schedule when selecting this setting.

How to assign people to tasks

Once a project is created, it’s important to identify the resources responsible for delivering the work. Effective project management involves scoping the project, planning milestones or phases, estimating tasks and managing remaining work.

With Assign people to tasks you can:

• Identify the right team members for each project
• Estimate tasks and track remaining work
• Maintain real-time visibility into your project pipeline

Learn how to create and manage tasks in:

• About tasks and how they work

All five (5) of Forecast’s standard permission profiles include the ability to create and edit tasks. Guest users may also manage tasks, depending on the level of access granted to them.

To compare permission profiles and understand the access each provides, see:

• Permissions: How they work

Understanding resource utilization using task assignments

Assign people to tasks controls resource utilization across all platform pages including:

• People Schedule
• Timeline
• Scoping
• Reporting

When selecting Assign people to tasks, it’s important to identify how time registrations affect the heatmap. Additional configuration within this setting determines how utilization is displayed in the heatmap, People Schedule, Timeline, and Reporting. 

People Schedule

People Schedule provides a visual overview of task assignments across your team, making it easy to identify underutilized, overbooked, or fully allocated resources. The additional heatmap setting controls how tasks are displayed and how they impact resource utilization within People Schedule.

Heatmap based on Task Estimates

People Schedule displays tasks based on their estimated hours. Task estimates display for the duration of the task and do not change in consideration of any time reported against the task. 

Tasks assigned to multiple resources split the estimated task hours over the number of assignees.

For example:

• A task has an estimate of 160h and is assigned to 2 team members.
• The task has a start date of May 1 and an end date of May 31.
• The task appears for each assignee displaying the entire 160h estimated on the task.
• Utilization for each team member is calculated based on the total estimated task hours and the number of assignees, or 80h (160h / 2 team members). 
• Any time registrations made on the task will not impact the utilization of the team members or reflect in the heatmap.
• Done tasks remain included in the team member's utilization until the end date of the task has passed, though they update in color appearing as bright green.

Heatmap based on Time Registrations & Remaining Time Estimates

People Schedule displays tasks based on their estimated hours and time registrations made against the task. Using this setting is quite effective in managing resource utilization based on tasks as long as your team members accurately manage their time registrations and task workflow statuses. 

For example:

• A task has an estimate of 160h and is assigned to 2 team members.
• The task has a start date of May 1 and an end date of May 31.
• The task appears for each assignee displaying the entire 160h estimated on the task.
• Utilization for each team member is calculated based on the total estimated task hours and the number of assignees, or 80h (160h / 2 team members). 
• Time registrations are logged against the task and the task's remaining hours and team member utilization update to reflect.
  • • Assignee 1 registers 8h on the task. Assignee 2 registers 2h, for a total of 10h registered. 
    • The task's total estimate (160h) is reduced by the total time registrations, or 10h.
    • Each assignee's utilization now reflects 70h. The 10h time registrations are deducted from the task's total estimated hours (80h - 10h = 70h).
• Done tasks are not included in the resources' utilization even if the task end date is in the future.
• People Schedule reflects the total time registered on a task, not the individual time logged by each team member. 
• Remaining time is shared equally across all assignees, regardless of how many hours each person has reported.

Non-project time allocations, like internal time and time-off, are managed through allocations. Time-off allocations directly affect a resource’s availability and the distribution of their task-assigned hours. 

For more about People Schedule and how time-off impacts resource availability check out:

• Reviewing your resource heatmap (People Schedule)
• Managing time-off using schedule allocations

Timeline

Timeline is available in each project and is a visual representation of the project's phases, tasks and team members. 

In Timeline you can:

• Manage your project progress
• Create and assign tasks
• Add/remove project team members
• Review team member utilization and availability 

Learn the benefits of using Timeline to manage your projects in:

• Viewing your Project Timeline

Scoping

Scoping is the hub of task-based resourcing. 

Use Scoping to:

• Create milestones or phases
• Create and assign tasks
• Manage task estimates and view remaining work
• Review project progress
• Track financials using the project totals summary

Discover how Scoping can elevate your project management 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 assigned tasks and billable versus non-billable task time.

Tasks created in Scoping, Task Board, Timeline or People Schedule appear in the Utilization Report.

Understand how task-based resourcing affects your resource utilization in:

• Overview of Utilization Report

Related articles

• Identifying your Resource Management Strategy
• About tasks and how they work
• Defining your project scope