Planned Workload To plan upcoming tasks based on team capacity for coming weeks
By setting my team capacity, I am able to plan upcoming weeks based on time estimations I have on all the tasks on my board.
Actual Time Tracked To visualise time tracked in previous weeks
I do this using Workload View by using Designers as the Resource Type and Time Tracked as the Effort. The hours tracked are then spread across however many days are in the timeline during which the designer worked on a particular task. The reason I use this view, rather than the time tracking widget, is because we do time tracking on subitem level, which is not supported by the widget.
I need this because otherwise there will be significant gaps in my Planned Workload since it is based on Estimated Time.
Scenario:
A designer estimates a task to take 5 hours which he can complete on the 10th of October.
This task ends up taking 20 hours, so the timeline actually was 10th-13th of October.
In this case, I would update the Actual Time Tracked so that it shows using the āTracked Timeā the 20 hours that were actually worked on this task.
If I didnāt have this, the only visual cue Iād have of this work would be the 5 hours done on the 10th of October, which is not helpful on Planned Workload since that task was not just 5 hrs.
I feel like there are a number of limitations that are holding me back quite significantly, mainly:
This means that I have to maintain 2 different timelines on the board, one āplanned timelineā that I use for Planned Workload, and another āactual timelineā which is used for Actual Time Tracked. The latter allows me to accurately spread the time tracked over the actual days designers worked on a particular subitem.
However maintaining 2 timelines across several items with several subitems is no easy feat. The good thing about this is that it allows me to monitor by how much my subitems are being delayed. However, it doesnāt help that automations do not support timelines (or they do but not in any ways that can be helpful in this situation).
What I am trying to achieve is :
an accurate representation of when designers started and finished tasks with time tracked spread over it (Actual Time Tracked)
a good overview of upcoming planned work (Planned Workload)
an understanding of how delayed my original timelines are
Does anyone else here use Monday similarly? Can you think of any better ways I can achieve what I want without all the manual work and complication of maintaining 2 different timelines? Any feedback would be truly appreciated.
Based on the information youāve shared so far, it sounds like in order for you to best optimise the platform features to achieve your end goal here, changing your current board structure might be the best route, although understandably not the most ideal. That being said, before moving forward, would you be happy to send over a couple of screenshots of your workflow (feel free to duplicate the board, and make the necessary changes to ensure no sensitive data is included) so that we can get a clear (visual) understanding of your set up? Or even just a snapshot of an item and subitem with those timelines? This will help us offer some alternative ideas and options based on what youāve already set up.
Of course, thank you for your recommendations so far.
In the 1st 2 screenshots attached you can see a Main Item and Subitem, but you can only see the relevant columns on the subitems as I am more interested in subitem timelines than main items. Main Items usually just use rollups.
You can see that we have 2 timelines - 1 for the plan and one for when the work actually gets carried out. Both are updated manually.
In the 3rd screenshot you can see how Iāve set up workload - Planned Workload for the Planned Timeline and Actual Time Tracked for the Actual Timeline. Planned Workload uses Est. Time as effort, whilst Actual Time Tracked uses the time tracked by the designers when working on a subitem.
I would also like to use the Workload widget to see the amount of time actually left spread across the remaining timeline. Letās say you start a project a couple of weeks later than planned. Youād have to manually adjust the timeline for every project to start ātodayā to get your workload to distribute remaining hours in the future.
Depending on how you plan your tasks (individually or en-masse) it may make sense using the Baseline functionality to create a snapshot of your original plan. This timeline, and the delta vs the main timeline are then clearly visible and removes the need for manual maintenance (although you will still have 2 timelines on your board). I do not know if this supports sub-items, or helps with input to the resource planning widget, but may make it easier to maintain your solution.
Hello Stuart, and thank you for your recommendation. One of the 2 timeline columns I have set up is actually the baseline feature that you mentioned. Itās a great feature, and whilst it helps keeping track of by how much items are delayed, Iām not sure it helps me with anything else. Thanks again!
In full transparency, based on your setup, I donāt believe it is currently possible (without changing your workflow structure) to more seamlessly display planned vs actual timelines, when tracking with both the time-tracking feature (actual) and numbers column (planned). We definitely acknowledge that there is fairly significant room for improvement in both the time tracking widget and workload widget, and this is feedback that I have shared internally.
I recognise this is an additional step for you, but in this situation, I would recommend reaching out to our support team (via support@monday.com), and jumping on a call or screen-share so the team can gather a bit more context about your workflow and the pain-points. This way, they can work with you on potential changes to your board structure, to get you closer to your overall goal.
Hopefully this is all okay, and apologies for the double work!
