2 years ago
Brief summary of this article:
We are pleased to announce the release of new solutions in Targetprocess. All the solutions are available in the Solution Library. You can read about their target business need and installation details and install them right to your account in no time!
The solutions described in this article are designed to help you manage User and Team Demand and Capacity, new Time Tracking solutions, and new components and extensions for the Project Portfolio Budgeting solution (a new version of it is coming soon!). Here you can see the videos for Demand Management solutions, User Blended Rates, Team Rates, Team Velocity and Cost per Point solutions and Actual Costs based on Time Records and Costs Roll Up solutions.
Demand and Capacity Solutions
This set of solutions allows tracking the upcoming demand of People (individuals) or Teams for existing and forthcoming Initiatives, Projects, or any other Work Items, seeing people's availability, and balancing the available and allocated capacity within a specific Period (such as Week, Month, Quarter or Year). Such demand and capacity management approaches are applicable for high-level planning when no work estimates are provided yet, and no lower-level items, such as Features or User Stories, exist. Planning is happening to roughly understand how much capacity is needed for work to be done and find the right people to do the job. It also allows tracking if people are going to be overloaded or see who is available to spread the load.
The main solutions covering these needs are:
If you'd like to use both solutions simultaneously, you'll need an additional solution User and Team Demand and Allocation Connector, allowing you to manage User and Team capacity simultaneously.
For the main solutions, you'll need some solution components allowing you to see how much capacity a person or a team has based on their planned Work Allocations during a period.
If you'd also like to consider people's Vacations in Availabilities, you can use Vacation Consideration in Availability and Demand solution.
In case you have cases when a User can belong to several Teams and would like to consider this in a person's availability, the following solutions might be convenient:
- User Involvement in a Team (Assign User approach) or
- User Involvement in a Team (Create Involvement approach)
Vacation Tracking
The Vacation Tracking solution enables tracking people's planned and unplanned Vacations, Sick Leaves, Overtime and Public Holidays. It visualises the vacation calendar on a timeline and allows us to consider people's holidays in capacity planning for any given date or period.
Vacation Tracking requires User Location solution to be installed that enables a capability to track the User's (work) Location. The Location of people often influences user rates and work costs, affects the availability of the requested resources and is used for solutions for HR people.
The demand and capacity solutions allow tracking User and Team demand in %. However, if you prefer to manage it in Man Days or Hours, you can enable the following solution extensions:
- Man Days instead of Percentage for Work Allocations
- Hours instead of Percentage for Work Allocations
And in case you'd like to see how many hours and how much a Work Allocation of a specific User or a Team may cost, you can extend it with Work Allocation Forecasted Hours and Cost based on User Rates.
Job Family Structure and User Expertise (Skills)
The Job Family Structure and User Expertise (Skills) solution enables a structure of Job Families -> Job Profiles -> Expertise (Skill of a specific level needed for a Job Profile), as we as a possibility to define what Expertise people have. Also, it can be used for hiring purposes, determining the seniority level people can get when joining the company, and using this information for capacity planning.
Using User Demand and Allocations by Job Profile and Skills solution, installed on top of this, you can perform capacity planning by Job Profile and/or Skills.
Time Tracking
A new set of solutions allows tracking time spent by employees. The main difference from the native Time Tracking solution (based on Times) is that now you can track time not only to User Stories and Tasks but to any items you are working on. It could be Features, Epics and Portfolio Epics (see the solution extensions), as well as for any other work items, for example, Action Items, where you spend time.
The main solution in this set is Timesheet solution, allowing users to see their weekly Timesheets and total hours spent daily on different activities.
To let people track Time on different work items, one, several or all the following solutions can be installed:
- Time Records for Portfolio Epics
- Time Records for Epics
- Time Records for Features
- Time Records for User Stories, Tasks, Bugs
These solutions enable the possibility of tracking Time for the mentioned in their name work items.
Vacation consideration in Timesheet can become a great extension for these solutions. It'll automatically create Time Records for Vacations, Sick Days and Public Holidays.
Rates
This set of solutions allows managing People, Team and ART (Agile Release Train) Rates.
Person (User) Rate
The Person (User) Rate solution enables Rates for a Person (or a User). The information about people rates is used to calculate labour cost and work cost using, for example, time spent working on a work item, effort and cost per point or cycle time.
Person (User) Blended Rate
The Person (User) Blended Rate solution enables Blended Rates for Locations and Job Profiles and sets Rates for Users based on their Location and Job Profile. It's used when you don't want to calculate estimated and forecasted costs using people's salaries but using a Blended Rate instead.
Team Rate
The Team Rate solution enables Rates for a Team.
This solution can be extended with:
- Calculate Team Rate based on Users Rates solution, which allows calculating Team Hourly Rate based on Users in this Team Hourly Rates. It's needed when Rates for Users are provided, however, you'd like to use the solutions, such as Team Cost per Point or others, which use Team Rates for calculations.
ART Rate
The Agile Release Train (ART) Rate solution enables Rates for Agile Release Trains (ARTs). It's needed when you'd like to estimate the cost of work by allocating an ART or several ARTs to it, and see how much it could cost you based on the duration of Work Allocations and ART Rate, or overview how much an ART costs you per hour of work.
Team Cost per Point
There are two new solutions allowing to track Team Velocity and calculate Team Cost per Point using a Team Rate.
Team Actual, Average and Forecasted Velocity
Team Actual, Average and Forecasted Velocity solution enables a new way to calculate Team Velocity based on effort completed in a Team Iteration; however, the Velocity value will be updated right when a User Story or Bug is moved to its final state so that you can track the actual Velocity as a Team Iteration progress.
Cost per Point (Team)
Cost per Point (Team) allows calculating Cost per Point for a Team based on the Team Rate and the Team Velocity. It's used to predict the cost of work or calculate actual costs.
Actual Costs Calculation
Actual Costs based on Time Records and User Rates
The Actual Costs based on Time Records and User Rates solution enables the calculation of a Cost related to a Time Record. The costs allow tracking how much we spend working on different work items and managing Actuals for different Periods (Days, Weeks, Months, Quarters and Years). The Cost will be created when a new Time Record is added to a system and will be based on a Connected User's current Hourly Rate and Hours defined in a Time Record.
Costs Roll Up
Costs Roll Up solution enables the calculation of Costs based on Time Records and User Rates up the hierarchy from Feature to Epic to Portfolio Epic so that we can see the total costs of those items. The total costs will be added to a Portfolio Epic and Portfolio Monthly, Quarterly and Annual Budgets. They can be used for Actuals visualization, as well as for budget forecasting.
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