Resource Allocation

Dominika

Hello Smartsheet Team,

I have been using Smartsheet for over a year now and my organization benefits greatly from Smartsheet functions! However, resource allocation is something that prevents us from moving forward with Smartsheet fully.

There are 2 things that we struggle with:

1. Lack of option of flexibility in the %Allocation column (no formulas, no references allowed; time allocated in % - we operate by hours).

2. The way Smartsheet calculates % Allocation and distributes work across the days doesn't work for us at all. When we have a task that will take a couple of days and needs to be completed in February, we may not care about the exact days. Thus, if I make a start date 02/01 and end date 02/28, and assign a Person A to this task who will need only 5% of their time to complete the task (5% of their overall time in February), Smartsheet will allocate 5% on every day of February, instead of splitting this 5% by number of work days. Therefore, the time is not reflected accurately, as my intention is to have this person spend only 5% of their time within February, not 5% each day. 

Are there any better ways to capture allocation %?

I hope that you will keep advancing your resource management function, as thus far, it has not been the strongest feature, and resource management is a crucial part of project management.

Thank you so much!

Dominika 

Andrée L PMP, CSM, PMI-ACP - Synapse

I've asked a similar questions around being able to define different allocation levels by day (work contouring) instead of assuming a flat allocation across all days in the period of time defined. the answer I got was create children tasks for each day that needs a different allocation level. Ie a 5 day task needs 6 rows (a parent task and 5 individual allocations rows) - which is not manageable in the long term or for larger efforts. For example a two week task could possibly generate 16 rows (very unmanageable). Hopefully they can bump this up on the feature priortiy list.

Dominika

Hi Andree,

Thank you so much for your comment, I really appreciate your response! 

I totally agree with you - this approach may work for a small project, but when larger and/or simply more projects are involved, that is totally unmanageable! Especially, when you need to have multiple folks allocated to one task, whose allocation % differs.

That would be tremendously helpful, if Smartsheet could keep advancing their resource management features, as thus far, it is not their strongest feature! Fingers crossed! 

Dominika

CRSSAUS

Hello Smartsheet development team,

We have used Smartsheet since 2017, we have used many Smartsheet features in our PM processes. However, we have not used the resource allocation feature because of its limitations.   

The requests from Andree & Dominika are essentials for resource allocations in project management. Their requests were raised in Jan 2019, is there light at the end of the tunnel on this topic ??  

CrssAus

Andrée Starå

Hi,

Have you looked at 10,000ft?

Smartsheet presented some more details about the 10,000ft capabilities at Engage.

More info: https://www.smartsheet.com/content-center/best-practices/engage-content/better-together-smartsheet-10000ft-story

https://www.10000ft.com/

More info: https://www.smartsheet.com/content-center/news/smartsheet-acquires-10000ft-enhance-resource-management-capabilities

Speaking more broadly, with the integration of 10,000ft, Smartsheet customers will benefit from the ability to plan and allocate resources across their projects, optimize resource allocation by function or skill set, track time against forecast, and gain real-time portfolio level visibility into the status of budgets and deliverables.

I hope that helps!

Have a fantastic day!

Best,

Andrée Starå

Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

Thiago Castro

Hi @Andrée Starå

10,000 seems like a great feature, I had the Smartsheet team presenting to us.

Saying that it is an additional cost where % allocation and or hours could easily solve the problem.

I think basic resource management should be available in Smartsheet and if the business requires further capabilities then jump to the added cost of adding 10,000 ft

Saying that it also comes back to a point to where there's value in keep adding things or moving perhaps for a tool like Mavenlink where you have a proper PM tool and the benefit of added BI to it.

I wish we could have a simple solution for this.

Any ideas without requiring further expenditure and unmanageable need to create endless rows would be appreciated.

Bassam Khalil

Hi @Thiago Castro,

Am fully agree with you, we hope that Smartsheet avoids increasing the cost of the package by converting most of the basic services to paid services. because the secret of the success of smartsheet was the flexibility & the low cost. they can add the complicated services only to paid and premium packages, this policy will be brought more users for smartsheet.

Andrée Starå

Hi @Thiago Castro

I think we'll see enhancements to resource management in the core product next year.

I hope that helps!

Be safe and have a fantastic weekend!

Best,

Andrée Starå | Workflow Consultant / CEO @ WORK BOLD

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emmanuel edon

Hi there, is there any updates about this enhancement Very important ! Thanks.