Monday, July 30, 2018

UniPhi 14 - Tactical resource planning

A more intriguing left field feature of UniPhi 14 is what we're calling tactical resource planning. As usual, a spreadsheet was shared with us from a client who said, can you help improve this. It was a one month look ahead resource by resource, project by project and task by task. The spreadsheet was updated by over 100 people! The summary sheet highlighted over and under allocations which was excellent information for management but oh what a nightmare to collect.

The problem was a distributed data capture problem that lends itself to a web based portfolio application as a solution. And, with the penny dropping that what they were after was a forecast of their timesheet, the solution became a simple one. End users were already entering actual hours, if we replicated this interface, they could enter forecast hours too.

Now, all staff members enter in what they expect to be working on, in collaboration with their project managers, over a rolling 4 week period. The summary report is run and resourcing issues identified by senior management.

Sample screen - before the first amendment to include comments
Summary report on overs and unders

Once again, working closely with clients and their end users has resulted in a nifty little tool for all our users. I can't wait for the feedback (which has already lead to a new comments field) and the inevitable improvements that ensue.

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