Organizations strive to find better ways to be more efficient, innovative, and collaborative with ever-changing workplace dynamics. This article elaborates on how project managers can maximize productivity and team utilization alongside resource planning for Atlassian Jira.
Meticulous planning is everything. Project managers are well aware that projects can not be done overnight when more employees are hired or added to the team. Instead, properly executing a project means delegating the right tasks to the right people. It’s about planning your resources right, dividing the work proportionately, and formulating a team composed of good chemistry — proper utilization results in better productivity and job satisfaction, which becomes a win-win for everyone.
Every project has a series of moving parts. And coordination is essential when teams are simultaneously working on multiple assignments. Therefore, it is imperative for project managers to always be on their A-game and remain the eyes and ears of every project they’re overseeing.
And with 180,000 users in more than 190 countries of the world, Jira is arguably the front-runner in overall work management. As much as planning and tracking projects become seamless with Jira, project managers often struggle to bring several departments together to get a birds-eye view of everything in motion. They’d prefer having more powerful insights in terms of reports as well as financial data centers.
A collaborative work environment will not only foster a more efficient workspace but also streamline workflow across departments. Hence, considering how Jira works, we’ve come up with a way to maximize productivity with resource planning for Jira. And before we dive into the details, let’s dig into some of the basic concepts.
What is Resource Planning?
Resource planning indicates the process of allocating assignments to human and non-human resources of an organization. The end goal here is maximum efficiency. This helps project managers allocate accordingly, keep track of resource capacity, and maintain the given budget.
As a project manager, resource planning allows you to organize your team to know what’s in hand. It also helps you understand resource capacity, ensuring you have effectively managed your team without burning anybody out with extra work.
Why is resource planning so crucial, though? Because it’s the aspect of project management that, on average, saves 28 times more money for organizations due to better input. 83% of senior executives say that the key to boosting organizational growth lies in strategically shifting resources. Hence, failing the project plan and planning your resources would mean failing to execute your project.
Resource Planning For Teams To Maximize Efficiency in Jira
While the textbook definition of resource planning is clear, you should understand what it means for your business. In a nutshell, resource planning helps your business in the following ways:
- More efficiency
- Better workflow
- Delivering the optimum results for projects
- Maximizing all the resources at your disposal
- Planning and predicting resource availability for upcoming projects For Jira
- Developing job satisfaction and employee retention in your organization
- Avoiding employee burnout
- Better relationship with clients
But how does it all fit in?
Let’s start from scratch. When your organization takes in a project, you figure out where to begin. You have to decide who gets to work on it:
- what resources you might be needing,
- how long it can take,
- the obstacles that may hinder workflow,
- how you will frame it into your overall streamline.
If you want to get the most out of resource planning, you need to customize and track every part of a project and calculate your budget accordingly. Various inputs come into play in this regard, such as:
- Hourly rates
- Workdays
- Titles
- Job roles
- Required skillsets
- Availability of resources
This is where resource planning comes into play because without utilizing the right tools, your business may get lost in the chaos while trying to manage resources across several projects.
While whiteboard and spreadsheets may initially seem like viable options, you might struggle when your team starts expanding and you take on more projects. That is when you feel the necessity of a resource planning tool. With the right resource management software, you’ll be able to see who’s working on what, how much time each project needs, the required budget, and so much more. And with Jira, which remains an all-time favorite for software engineers, you can create, plan, and track everything across your software team.
But Why Isn’t Jira Enough?
Here’s the thing. Jira isn’t cut out for project management. Project managers often struggle with Jira when things are shifting. Jira is perhaps the best tool for issue tracking, but it’s barely enough for reporting, budgeting, and resource allocation.
You might be managing several teams, but you won’t be able to see the bigger picture, which means you’ll only have an estimate of how your projects are going in real-time. Moreover, Jira lacks collaboration. This is to say that more often than not, this tool shifts the focus entirely on the ‘micro’ side and neglects the ‘macro’ side.
As a project manager, if you’re handling several different projects, you need to be in the loop at all times, and Jira doesn’t make it any easier. Hence, while you may wish for an all-in-one software tool that will do everything you can hope for, that won’t be the case in real life. Today, organizations digitize and collaborate their work across several platforms to ensure better connectivity.
Jira Project Portfolio Management With PPM Express
Despite its drawbacks, Jira holds a very high value for several project-based organizations. And connecting it with another software that allows you to plan projects and resources is a better and more effective alternative than discarding it altogether. That is where an efficient project portfolio management software like PPM Express comes in handy.
PPM Express is a cloud-based project portfolio management software offering Jira integration. This tool steps in when you’re managing all your projects in Jira but lacking acute visibility in high-level portfolio management. You don’t need replacements; you need to integrate the tools that make your teams productive by enriching Jira with PPM Express’s project portfolio management capabilities.
‘We are currently using PPM Express as our Portfolio Management Platform. The reports and Dashboards provide valuable consolidated information at different levels, and the beauty of this is that it’s just connecting information we already have and getting all the possible value from it.’ – Paola Bobbio, Director Project Management Office, Invatron.
With a seamless synchronization with Jira, PPM Express facilitates an accessible and collaborative workspace. You don’t have to close PPM Express and open a new tab to work on Jira. Client-based teams and project managers can monitor the progress of each project – all in real-time. You can connect to all of your people, teams, and departments and see how they move forward. PPM Express also empowers you to collaborate across different platforms and ensures that you stay on top of the project’s development.
PPM Express offers project managers real-time insights and facilitates them to answer how each project progresses and what you require to complete it on time, within budget, and with optimum value. With PPM Express, project managers understand and value the role of interconnectivity.
Project managers can keep everything connected and monitor everything from the more significant problems to the minor details at their convenience. With the synchronization between Jira and PPM Express, productivity is the only way forward.
Jira-PPM Solutions & What It Means For Your Organization
What does integrating Jira and PPM Express mean for your business? Read on to find out!
Visibility Over Jira Portfolio
With this integration between PPM Express and Jira, you can gain visibility across all your projects in Jira, track statuses and delivery time, and look at detailed reports on your PMO performance. You can also access executive-level reporting without feeling the need to switch between tools.
With PPM Express, you can structure your business’s project portfolio process based on your work in Jira, track project statuses, and track budgets for portfolios. You can see the bigger picture of your PMO and practice better and more effective management. This practically takes your project management process to new heights.
Powerful Reporting System
Better reports and analytics means better and more informed decisions. With the combination of Microsoft Power BI and PPM Express resource management software, you can determine the availability of each resource. How much is being used for current projects, which resources are overloaded, which lack workload, and so much more?
Project Resource Planning
At the initiation stage of a project, project managers can form detailed resource plans and determine resource requirements. With PPM Express’s Resource Management tool, resource planning is made seamless. You can view resource conflicts and overload in all your plans and eliminate those instantly.
Effective Allocation – Plan More, Save Time
PPM Express offers various features calculating resource utilization, including but not limited to Quick Allocation, multi-select, and Auto-allocation. Using these features, you can adequately allocate work, accomplish resource and workload leveling, and avoid conflicts.
Take the Guesswork Out of Capacity Planning
With PPM Express, you have access to a bird’ eye view of your resource capacity. And hence, you can build and maximize your project portfolio to ensure completed projects well ahead of time. In case of last-minute changes, you can seamlessly assess how you’d reassign tasks to other resources and see the effect of your changes in real-time.
Manage Resource Utilization and Balance Team Workloads
Project managers generally use the Team Planner module to delegate and balance resource workload across several projects. This may be based on resource availability, budget, percentage of work allocation for each team member, etc. Once set, you can instantly look at warning signs in case of resource conflict or work overload. As such, you can ensure an equal and effective workload among all your resources, and there will be no scope for gaps or overallocation.
View Assigned Tasks for the Team Members – Across Tools and Projects
Using PPM Express, resource managers and project managers can look at all the planned tasks and segment those accordingly. You can view who is working on what, the extent of resource capacity, workload, overallocation, and resource conflicts.
If you’re using other tools to make your job easier, PPM Express has a solution for you there, too. You can view all your assigned tasks and work across different projects and integrate tools such as Jira Software, Microsoft Office 365 Planner, Azure DevOps, and Microsoft Project Online.
Final Words
With everything said and done, rest assured that the integration between Jira and PPM Express will boost your project management process to new heights. There is no doubt that PPM Express molds the future of project-based organizations, making sure your resources are utilized in the best way possible. All you need to do is sign up for a free 30-day trial and see the wonders for yourself.
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