It’s been a couple of months since we launched our Resource Loading Simulation module here at Easy Projects. It’s caused quite a stir amongst our users and we received a lot of feedback on how to make it even better. We’ve recently launched version two, and we’re excited to show you what this baby can do.
For those of you who are just tuning in, the RLS was originally created with the following functionality:
- Add skills to users
- Choose the start and end dates
- Choose the best people for the job
- Automatically create a draft project
With our new and improved module you can answer questions like
- How will the existing projects be affected by adding a new project?
- How many additional (external) resources are required to complete a new project without affecting the schedule of others?
Firstly, after you select the skills that you need for your project, and have a list of possible team members who will fit your scheduled timeline, you’ll see this:
The percentages that you see represent overloading. If you click at the very bottom where it says “3 assignees might be overloaded by 119 hours”, you’ll see a drop down that breaks down the exact overlaps in number of hours. It looks like this:
After looking these overloads, you can create the project and assign the tasks. In the Activity Centre, you’ll be able to see the overloads broken down by number of hours, plus see how many other people are on the project and also overloaded. Now you don’t have to go through every single task to find discrepancies.
Here’s how you fix the problem:
We can see who is overloaded and by how many hours. In the case above, we can see that Barbara is only available for 32 hours of the 80 hours. We can also see other team members who have the same skills that can take on the job. In this case we would transfer Barbara’s hours over to Arturo who has 80 hours available. Problem solved!
There are two main things that you can do with the new RLS update:
- Replace overloads with another available person
- Change the details of the task ( start and end dates, dependencies etc)
You can also create projects straight from template by adding the skills and seeing who is available when and by skill. Easy Projects will automatically find the perfect people and plug them into your project. So easy!
Our development is always working hard to bring you the latest and greatest updates to help make your life easier. Watch this space for more updates!
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