Demand and Capacity Management

Solution Overview

The solution allows tracking the upcoming demand of People (individuals), Teams and Agile Release Trains (ARTs) 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, Year or Custom Period). 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 work. It also allows tracking if Users, Teams and/or Agile Release Trains (ARTs) are going to be overloaded or see who is available to spread the load.

During solution installation, you can customize the solution by selecting:

• The Level for capacity planning — Users, Teams, and/or Agile Release Trains (ARTs).
• The Units of measurement — Percentage (%), Hours, or Man Days.
• The Planning Period — Year, Quarter, Month, Week, or a Custom Period.

You an also define if you'd like to:

• Enable capacity planning considering Job Profiles and Skills required.
• Enable Vacation Tracking to affect People Available Capacity
• Consider User Involvements in a Team to calculate capacity.

The solution is installed by default for Portfolio Epics (so we create User/Team/ART Work Allocations for Portfolio Epics and track capacity based on this). However, we can connect the capacity solution to any other entity you prefer to do capacity planning for.

User Daily Hours and Man Days (MD)

When the solution is installed , you'll see new fields available for a User:

• Daily Hours – representing how many Hours per Day a User has in a Working Day, based on his Weekly Hours and considering 5 working days a week.
• Daily MD – representing how many Man Days (MD) a User has in a Working Day. It'll be calculated as Daily Hours / DailyMD, where DailyMD represents the number of Hours in a Man Day (MD) in your organization and set during the solution installation,

Availability in Periods

A new Availabilities tab will appear in the User, Team, and/or Agile Release Train views. This tab provides information on the User, Team and/or Agile Release Train (ART) Total, Reserved, and Available Capacity  in Percentage (%), Hours, or Man Days (MD), depending on your chosen configuration, within a selected Planning Period .

Having information about User Daily Hours, Daily MD and a number of Working Day in each Period we can calculate how many Hours and Man Days (MD) a User has in each Period (Availability), how much capacity is Reserved and how much is Available.

• Total Capacity, Hours and Man Days (MD) represent the total available Capacity, Hours and Man Days (MD) in a Period.
• Reserved Capacity (%), Hours and Man Days (MD) will be calculated based on created Work Allocations and Time Off.
• Available Capacity (%), Hours and Man Days (MD) will be calculated as a difference betweenTotal Capacity/Hours/MD and Reserved Capacity/Hours/MD values respectively
• Overloaded Status indicates if a User, Team or Agile Release Train (ART) is overloaded, meaning the Reserved Capacity exceeds the Total Capacity.
• Count of Overloaded Demands reflects that there are Demands requesting more capacity than the User, Team or Agile Release Train (ART) has available within a given Period . While a User may not be overloaded overall, specific Demands might be. You can review and adjust these Demands by modifying the Work Allocation dates or the Requested Capacity, Hours or Man Days (MD).

Define Demand for a Portfolio Epic

There are the following entities are enabled by the solution:

• Work Allocation – represents work demand defining for how long (Planned Start and Planned End dates) and for which Percentage (%)  or how many Hours / Man Days (MD) we need a User, Team or Agile Release Train (ART) to work on an item. We can define a specific person User, Job Profile, Team or ART or create a work allocation without defining it if we don't know who it will be or if it doesn't matter at the moment. There can be multiple work allocations for the same User, Team or ART during different Periods.
• Demand - represents demand for a specific Period, i.e. if capacity planning is happening based on a Month Period and a work allocation is planned for 3 months, then the system will automatically create 3 Demands for each Month within this Work Allocation – one Demand for each Period.

To plan capacity and allocations of people, Project Managers or Initiative Owners first should create User, Team or ART Work Allocations for a Portfolio Epic, defining how much of their capacity, in Percentage (%), Hours or Man Days (MD) is needed to work on it. Work Allocations may not have a Connected User, Team or ART if they are unknown yet. Work Allocation can be created either from a Portfolio Epic detailed view or from the Portfolio Epic Demand view in the left menu. If you create a User Work Allocation, you can also define Job Profile and/or Skills required (see the description of that solution component further).

Here you need to define:

•  Status of Work Allocation (Requested or Approved or Rejected).
• Percentage (%), Requested Hours or Requested MD of capacity requested
• Planned Start and End Dates
• Connected User, and/or Job Profile, Team or ART if known.

When a Work Allocation is created, it’ll be connected to the respective Periods (Weeks, Months, Quarters, Years or Period) based on its Planned Start/End Dates. Demands will be generated automatically for each respective Period. Requested Capacity will be spread between the Demands based on the number of Working Days in them.

There is an option during the solution installation to exclude some specific States of Work Allocations (for example Rejected or Requested) from affecting Overload flag.

Work Allocations are moved through the their workflow based on either their States or based on Planned Dates using the following logic:

• If a Work Allocation Planned Start Date happens and a Work Allocation is not In Progress (the first state after the Planned state, or the first state after the Initial state if the Planned state doesn't exist in the workflow) state, then it'll be moved to In Progress state, so its Start Date = Planned Start Date.
• If a Work Allocation Planned Start Date happens and a Work Allocation is In Progress state, then nothing happens and the current Start Date will be kept.
• If a Work Allocation Planned End Date happens and a Work Allocation is not in the Final state, then it'll be moved to the Final state, so its End Date = Planned End Date.
• If a Work Allocation Planned End Date happens and a Work Allocation is in the Final state, then nothing happens and the current End Date will be kept.

Process Unfulfilled and Overloaded Demand

New (Requested) Demand

On this screen you can see all the current and future Work Allocations in the Requested state. Here is a list of already allocated demands (Work Allocations with a Connected User, Team or ART), which need to be Approved, and Work Allocations with no Allocated User, Team or ART, where we need to find people to allocate. In the Available User, Team or ART field you can find people available based on their current load and availability for the needed duration (Planned Start and End Dates of Work Allocation). In Connected User, Team or ART field you'll see all the people in the company.

Demand to Process

Based on the created Work Allocations, people can become Overloaded, meaning their total Work Allocations exceed 100% for the the current or future Period. This can occur when a Work Allocation (or its Demands) requires more capacity than is available, or when multiple Work Allocations combined demand more capacity than is available within the same period. There are  also cases when Work Allocations got Approved, however there is no User, Team or ART allocated to it yet, or there are overloaded people.

You can see such Work Allocations on the Approved Demand to Process view. Here you can find the Available people for Work Allocations and resolve Overloads .

• To resolve a Work Allocation overload, you can reduce the Requested Capacity (Percentage, Hours, or Man Days) or adjust the Planned Dates of the Work Allocation, i.e. make it longer.
• To address an overall Overload caused by multiple Work Allocations, you can either decrease the Requested Capacity for each Work Allocation or shift some Work Allocations to different Periods.

Track User, Team or Agile Release Train Capacity

Based on the solution configuration you'll have additional folders in the left menu to track User, Team or Agile Release Train (ART) Capacity. Here is the example of User Capacity views:

User Current and Future Allocations

On the User Current and Future Allocations view you can see the current and future Work Allocations by User. 

User Availability

The User Availability view offers an overview of a User Availability across selected Periods, displaying the following information:

• Reserved Capacity, Hours or Man Days (MD): The total effort booked for a User based on Work Allocations and Time Off.
• Total Capacity, Hours or Man Days (MD): The total available effort for a User within the defined Period.
• Overloaded Status: Indicates if a User is overloaded, meaning the Reserved Capacity exceeds the Total Capacity.
• Count of Overloaded Demands (OD): While a User may not be overloaded overall, specific Demands might request more capacity than the User has available within a given Period. You can review and adjust these Demands by modifying the Work Allocation dates or the Requested Capacity, Hours or Man Days (MD).

People Load

The People Monthly Load report provides an overview of individual workloads on a Period basis, allowing for adjustments and planning to ensure balanced distribution of Work Allocations. 

Work Allocations by User

The Work Allocations by User roadmap visualise User Work Allocations in time, helping to manage workloads and plan future assignments effectively. 

Solution Extensions

Based on the solution configuration you may or may not have several additional solution enabled:

Vacation Consideration in Capacity Management

The solution allows considering Time Offs (Vacations, Sick Leaves, Public Holidays, and Overtimes) in the Reserved Capacity.

It enables tracking of people's planned and unplanned Vacations, Sick Leaves, Overtime and Public Holidays and visualises the vacation calendar on a timeline and allows to consider people's holidays in capacity planning for any given date or period.

This solution allows you to track the following employees' Time Off types:

• Public Holiday 
• Vacation 
• Sick Leave 
• Overtime 

You can create a Time Off for one or several days as well as for half of a day.

Public Holidays

Public Holidays are set-up per Location. Public Holidays are automatically created for all the users registered at that Location.

Note: If a new User is added to the system and a location is set up for him/her, or a Location has been updated for an existing User, then all the future Public Holidays in this Location will be created for this User.

In case the Location is changed for a User, all the past Public Holidays will be kept and all the future ones for the old Location will be deleted. Future Public Holidays for a new Location for this User will be created.

Vacation Consideration in Capacity Management

When consider Time Off in Capacity Management, new details will become available forTime Off entities, depending on whether you've chosen to plan capacity using Man Days, Hours, or Percentage:

• Working Days – displays the total number of working days spanned by the Time Off.
• Reserved Capacity – shows the capacity booked during the Time Off, which varies based on the Half Day flag for Vacations, Sick Leaves, and Public Holidays. For Overtime, it is calculated based on Requested Hours and Total Hours.
• Requested Hours / MD – reflects the requested time off, determined by the User’s Daily Hours and Daily MD and the Half Day flag (for Overtime, it's entered manually).
• Reserved Hours / MD – initially equals Requested Hours/MD. In the future, this can be adjusted with an approval process.
• Total Hours / MD – calculated based on the number of Working Days in the Time Off and the user's Daily Hours / MD.

For each Time Off (excluding Overtime), when created, a Demand for the respective period will be generated and linked to a User, Team, and Agile Release Train (ART) Availability, based on the solution configuration.

This will impact the people Reserved Capacity by considering Time Off Reserved Hours in Availability.

User Demand and Allocations by Job Profile and Skills

The solution is an extension of the User Capacity Management solution. It allows you to additionally consider user Job Profile and Skills when searching for an Available User, as well as see how much capacity demand you have for each Job Profile.Job Family Structure and User Expertise (Skills)

The 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 that people have. It can be used for hiring purposes, for defining the seniority level people can get when joining the company, and use this information for capacity planning.

After you install the solution from the Solution Library, you'll see a new Job Families and Skills folder in the left menu. First, you need to create a list of Skills used in your organization. You can do it from Skills List view.

Now on the Job Families and Profiles view we can introduce the hierarchy of Job Families -> Job Profiles -> Expertises. Job Profile Expertise represents a Skill needed for this Job Profile. Here you define:

• The Experience Level required
• If it's a Core Skill for this Job Profile
• What level of this Skill is needed for each seniority level.

Available Resources field will show how many people of this Job Profile you have in the company.

Note: Seniority levels are custom fields, so they can be adjusted based on your company seniority levels. Please keep in mind, that you'll need to adjust colored units with these values to keep them working.

For each User you can define their Job Profile, as well as create a list of Expertises a User has. User Expertise represents a Skill a person has. Here you define the Skill  Experience Level,  define if it's a Core Skill of this person and the level of the Skill.

Now, when creating a new Work Allocation, you'll have to define a Job Profile needed for a Work Allocation.

Note: You will probably see the fields in Quick Add in a different order. The fields can be re-ordered in Settings -> Quick Add.

When a Work Allocation is created, you can add the desired Expertise (Skills of the needed Experience Level) on a Work Allocation view.

There are also two additional fields, Available User by Job Profile and Available User by Skill, which will appear on a Work Allocation.

• In the Available User by Job Profile field, you'll find only the Users who are available for this Work Allocation (based on Dates and Percentage) and a matching Job Profile.
• In the Available User by Skill field, you'll find only the Users who are available for this Work Allocation (based on Dates and Percentage) and a matching a Job Profile and an Expertise Skill.

On theJob Profile Load report you can see how much capacity of a Job Profile is needed over time vs how many Available Resources you have for this Job Profile.