Workload Planning

Introduction to Workload Planning

Role clarity and workload planning go hand in hand. Our experience shows that once roles are defined and assigned within a team, the next crucial question is: who will spend how much time in which role? As traditional job structures are broken down into role-based structures, each team member will take on various roles instead of just one job. Clarity and transparency become essential, which is where our new teamdecoder feature, “workload planning,” comes into play.

Understanding FTE

For planning purposes, we use the widely accepted term FTE, which stands for Full-Time Equivalent. An FTE of 1.0 represents a full-time worker, while an FTE of 0.5 indicates half of a full workload, typically a part-time worker. This measurement standardizes labor input across different employees, aiding in budgeting, staffing, and productivity analysis.

Step-by-Step Guide to Workload Planning

Step 1: Define Available Time Per Team Member

1. Open the person’s tool by clicking on their name.
2. Mark the FTE based on their employment status:
   • If Sam is a full-time employee, mark 1 FTE.
   • If Sarah works half-time, mark 0.5 FTE.
3. Note: The highest value is 1, representing full-time.

Step 2: Determine Time Investment Per Role

1. Open the tool for a skill, role, domain, or link by clicking on an item in a blue list.
2. Start at the bottom left:
   • If the team budget allows for 3 developers, mark 3 FTE.
   • If the team needs 2.5 project managers, mark 2.5 FTE.
3. Leave this field empty if no specific budget is set.

Step 3: Assign People to Roles

1. Manage assignments also within the tools of the blue lists.
2. Navigate to the owners section on the top right:
   • Let’s start with the role “developer”:
     • Assign Sam 0.5 FTE
   • Let’s now move to the role “project manager” and
     • and assign Sam their other 0.5 FTE
     • and assign Sarah’s 0.5 FTE entirely to this role.
     • in the bottom left you can see the yellow number "1" - indicating the sum of 2x the assigned 0,5 FTE - out of the planned 2,5 FTE
       

Step 4: Monitor Workload with the Overview

1. Go to “settings” and enable “show workload.”
   
   The lists then show workload pills in all cards like this:
2. View workload indicators (teamdecoder pills):
   • If Sam is planned for 1 FTE out of 1 available FTE, it shows green.
   • If Sarah is planned for 0.5 FTE out of 0.5 available FTE, it also shows green.
3. Color Indicators:
   • Red indicates over-allocated time.
   • Yellow indicates under-allocated time.
   • A dash indicates no planned time but assigned people.
4. Examples:
   • If the “developer” role shows 0.5 of 3 FTE, it means 3 developers are needed, but only 0.5 is assigned.
   • If the “project manager” role shows 1 of 2.5 FTE, it means 2.5 project managers are needed, but only 1 is planned (0.5 FTE each for Sam and Sarah).

Workload in Reports

Every team member can see their personal workload calulation inside theri report:

• in the yellow list under section "Workload" Sam can see
  • his planned availability (1, white box)
  • the time he has been planned inside this report (1,00, green box - green because Sam is planned 1 out of 1 FTE)
• in the items within the blue lists Sam can see how his 1 FTE has been distributed: 0,5 for the skill "Developer" and 0,5 for the role "Project Manager"

Total Workload Counter

On top if the page you will see this:

This is your overall FTE counter:

• ava = "available" - in this team all people together have a capcity of 5 FTE
• pln = "planned" - all roles, skills, domains and links that thus team has planned, come to a total of 18.5 FTE (so the team is much too small to fill all these parts)
• asn = "assigned" - in this team 4.75 out the overall 5 available FTE of all people have been assigned to roles, skills, domains and links.

Workload in "Generic Roles"

First, what is a genric role? Read here

Genric roles are automatically attributed. All team members, who are e.g. made "lead" in a circle, automatically get assigned the generic role "circle lead". In this role you can define, what ALL circle leads need to do (same goes for project leads).

 And being a circle lead needs time, of course - to accompish purpose, tasks and objectives. So you can also assign workload (FTE) inside these generic items, like this:

Attention:
As this is a new feature, (co-)admins that use teamdecoder from since before this feature existed, will sometimes not see the owners in the generic item. In this case, please delete the team member from the lead role and add them again. Chat with us in the bottom right of this page and we guide you through this!

By following these steps, you can ensure that your team’s roles and workloads are clearly defined, transparently assigned, and efficiently managed.

More questions or need a guiding hand? Please use the livechat on all our pages or write to helpdesk@teamdecoder.com

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