This is a scenario where there is a team of 50 developers. They hold different technology knowledge and skill sets.
We work on various prototype projects (create new products) with various technologies using Agile/Scrum.
These developers are allocated to these projects based on their technology knowledge. Sometimes 1 developer works on 2-3 projects at the same time (difficult! but I am not getting to this point here).
Since these are prototype projects, the product backlog changes frequently which makes it hard to foresee the workload of developers in a certain period of time, not to mention the fact that some of them work on 2-3 projects parallely.
Questions: what is a good way that one ultilizes the resources and foresees developers's availability to carry on new projects? Saving Changes...
Unfortunately with the nature of the multitasking across the team, it will be very difficult to forecast capacity with any degree of predictability.
While even a simple spreadsheet could be used for this purpose, the frequency of changes would make the information useless beyond a few days out.
And if you are using an adaptive approach, it will be even more critical to focus core team members (i.e. those whose skills are needed on the majority of work items) on a single product/project.
You can assign a skill type and skill level to each employee, the skills and levels required for each project, and allocate people to projects based on need. You can do that electronically, or physically using a magnetic whiteboard with color coded magnets for each person. If people could be working multiple projects, you must be careful about over allocating them to too many.
To address the predictability issue brought up by Kiron, keeping things simple will help flexibility. Brief daily crew meetings with all the PMs can be used to share needs and surpluses, and you simply move people's magnet from project 1 to project 2 as required. This is a common approach used in manufacturing environments, but it works for office work also. Saving Changes...
I recommend using software like monday.com, which allows you to control multiple projects running at once and organize resources in all areas. Saving Changes...
Sergio Luis ConteHelping to create solutions for everyone| Worldwide based OrganizationsBuenos Aires, Argentina
My recomendation is take a look to SAFe model for creating teams. It worked for me. I am not saying that "use SAFe" what I am saying the model SAFe uses works for this type of situations perhaps with some kind of "customization" Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Do,
hope I address you correctly.
My thinking is to avoid to try to 'utilize your resources' but look at the value created by the team instead. And try to maximize the value and you will see that some resources are under-utilized. Maximizing the value will mean to optimize the flow (of projects) thru your team, identify the bottleneck and remove it (it is only one at a time). Again and again.
The second effect will be that your customers will come back and demand projects from you as they see that you have great value for them. Which reduces the stress to predict demand, as it grows.
If you maximize utilization, you will overload the team, create queues and waiting times (waste) and while everyone is busy, the team outputs get worse and less.
From a system perspective: if you optimize elements of a system, the system will not become optimal (famous example of trying to build a car from the best components from all manufacturers - it will not drive at all). Value is created by the team, not individuals. Saving Changes...
Latha Thamma reddiSr Product and Portfolio Management (Automation Innovation)| DXC TechnologyMckinney, Tx, United States
i hope you got the solution.. thanks for different views and tools shared. Saving Changes...
We have been using 2 spreadsheets.
- 1 acts like a skill matrix where we use pivot and knows who holds what technology stack knowledge.
- 1 acts like a "allocation" sheet where each team lead can "predicts" the percentage of workload for each developer monthly = but to higher management, this is not really the accurate data that we can really use to foresee. Also the spreadsheet will not be updated per resource change happens mind-way since these team leads only work on the file once a month, so at random interval of times, data can be obsolete.
Meanwhile, we use JIRA where we can see actuality of what each developer is working on and their velocities.
I feel like there can be some linkage between these tools so we can see a big picture and use the actual data of workload from JIRA (see actual workloads at the present, roadmap of what developers are working on, how the developers got switched to another project mid-way when they are needed, etc.), but I don't know yet what that linkage can be.
Sergio has a point with checking out SAFe. I also felt like there could be something I could learn from it, though I asked a few people good with SAFe around me and they couldn't find any help from it. Guess I'l spend some time to dig in that one. Saving Changes...
Thomas WalentaGlobal Project Economy ExpertHackenheim, Germany
Another input to your thinking: why not use AI to optimize resources?
