Office-wide deployment planning in scenarios
J
Jan Holländer
Deployment planning at project level is already working very well in Projo and will be significantly better with the upcoming, revised deployment planning.
However, there is also a need to carry out deployment planning not only on a project basis, but also across the office — in the form of scenarios, without employees being able to immediately see these considerations. Because this often leads to uncertainty that might not even be necessary. We, @Arne, had already talked about this before. However, even I had not yet been able to formulate as clearly as I would like it to be and what requirements we would have in doing so.
Here are our thoughts:
• The list of projects/deployment planning per employee shows what percentage of these are currently planned in projects. This allows you to see when someone becomes available.
• In our opinion, this list should be able to designate people for projects without already including them in the actual deployment planning. In other words, you should be able to determine which project you want to use someone for and then specify the period and percentage value.
• When this is done, the list should show for which period of time and for which project you have planned someone.
• It would be helpful if projo would then also forecast the expected result at the end of each month with the new planned person.
• If you have created such a scenario for all employees, it would be great if you could save it — so that you can test, recall and update different variants.
• The actual deployment planning is then carried out — after consultation with employees and project managers — in the respective project. And even then, as before, it will be visible to employees themselves in projo.
I know that is no small wish and certainly not easy to implement — especially since employees in offices are often booked on several projects at the same time. But from our point of view, this function would usefully improve the “brand core” and expand the range of functions so that you would no longer have to use your own tables or similar tools.
J
Jan Holländer
Dear Arne Semmler, because we had already talked about this topic some time ago, I would like to send you this post. VG! Jan
Arne Semmler
Jan Holländer: There are still no “simulations” for the new deployment planning as in the old deployment planning. We will then consider submitting a comparable function only after the launch of the New Deployment Plan. The previous “simulations” should be called “scenarios” in the future and the question would be whether, in addition to local scenarios, we also have office-wide environments, e.g. worst/real/best? If I then add a project manager simulation to the “Best” scenario, it is played back there centrally. Or do you rather think of “more general scenarios”? My idea was that these season scenarios could also be reflected in Liqui, etc.
J
Jan Holländer
Dear Arne Semmler,
From my point of view, these are currently (or as a first step) three independent functions or considerations whose combination seems very complicated to me, but may make sense in the future.
Perhaps I will describe the three use cases for scenarios again from my point of view:
J
Jan Holländer
- Project view (deployment planning in the project in scenarios)
From my point of view, this is about trying out different team configurations in order to find an optimal team composition under given circumstances.
However, these circumstances are often unclear, but are thought experiments — regardless of whether a particular person is currently involved in another project or not. Because the project managers don't care about that for now; they may want to attract a specific person to the project, even though they are currently engaged in another project.
All that is important for project managers is therefore the information that a person is tied somewhere else — in the scenario, they should still be able to be scheduled. At first, this person doesn't learn anything about this (and no one else automates either).
- Office view of deployment planning
In the office view of deployment planning, our team responsible for this purpose can see which employees are planned in which project and by what percentage of their own capacity.
A need for action is therefore identified here.
The task of this team is now — from an office perspective — to discuss options for distributing employees among the teams.
These are also thought experiments that should only be visible to this team and must have no further effects.
It would only be helpful here if the HR team could also see the predicted project result as soon as they schedule an additional person in a project. The result forecast would only have to calculate the current project result minus the planned costs in accordance with the scenario (in total, not LPH-specific).
Here, too, no one should be able to see anything about these experiments who do not have the right to do so. There is therefore no actual impact on projects, liquidity or the like — not even notifications.
J
Jan Holländer
- Scenarios in liquidity planning
This is not about which employee is planned for which project at what percentage, but only about how much money I expect to receive and which costs have to be taken into account.
The scenarios at this level would then be more like:
• What happens when a project is interrupted, discontinued, or a new project comes — or not?
• And how do I then have to react with the number of employees?
• So what happens if I have two fewer or more employees from time period XY?
This, in turn, has no effect on the other areas.
I see the difficulty of comprehensibility in combining these three views.
From my point of view, these are different issues that (we) also work on by different teams. A change in View 2 would therefore have an impact on liquidity, which the Liqui team would then be unable to understand.
Conversely, it is not the job of the HR team to keep an eye on liquidity.
So I am (for now) arguing for independent scenarios.:)
We are also welcome to call Arne Semmler if that should help.
Greetings!
Jan