Resource management settings for projects

Settings for Projects Projects in Workfront allow you to understand the time, talent, and energy your team puts into doing great work. In this video, we’re going to cover three components to optimize the resource management tools. They are… Durations and Planned Dates, Planned Hours, Job Role Assignments Task Durations Task durations define the timeframe or window of time for when a task starts and ends and can be captured as days, weeks, or even months. Ultimately, durations are part of what creates your project timelines to determine when a project will start or end. For example, you’re the manager of a content marketing team that regularly produces videos for social media. Typically, it takes you about three days to create a five-minute video. That three-day timeframe is the duration. Once entered, the system automatically changes the planned start and planned completion dates for the task in the project timeline. This gives you visibility into when work begins and ends.

Planned hours are the best estimate for the amount of time the work should take to complete within the given window of time, the duration. For example, producing a five-minute video has a three-day duration. But the number of hours it takes to produce a video is another matter. Based on past experience, you know it takes approximately 21 hours to produce a five-minute video. That time could be spread evenly across the three-day duration or follow the typical team schedule of spending six hours on day one, seven on day two, and eight on day three. Remember, the planned hours are a best estimate based on experience. They aren’t set in stone and they can be changed based on the specific project. All of that data, your timelines and planned hours can be captured on project templates. If your team is confident the templates are pretty accurate, your ability to manage time and talent to meet demand is nearly there.

Job roles identify the skill set a person has and defines what skill set is needed for tasks within projects. For example, to produce a five-minute video, you need a script writer, graphic designer, video editor, etc. If you don’t know who is available and when at the time of creating this project, you can assign a job role to the task as placeholders. Tasks can be assigned one or more job roles to indicate what expertise is needed to do the job. Workfront recommends that when a project is organized into parent and child tasks, that job role assignments should be made to the child tasks only. Parent tasks are mainly used as a title to organize the child tasks.