Having the ability to balance resources during a Project provides the security and confidence to maintain momentum in producing the work necessary within the time constraints for delivery.
By balancing resources within a project, opportunities in capacity can arise allowing for the addition of new projects to take on to make the most of the resources available in future planning.
More crucially, the production resources can be managed ahead of time to prevent unexpected spikes in production demands.
Forecasting in ftrack Studio allows us to see the distribution of resources and allows for easy balancing of project workloads. Forecasting can be useful in any phase of a Project and filters can be used to hone in on the details of interest.
Scenario: Deep into production we want to see how much confidence we have in producing the work planned with the necessary resources. We may need to add new members of the team or scale down if resources are needed elsewhere. We’ll use the Forecast report for an overview of how work is distributed and if we need to make changes.
ACTIVITY: Let’s have a look at the balance between our resources
Navigate to the dashboard “Capacity forecast” in the left pane of Overview.
The numbers shown in the Forecast table represent working days estimated and available for the Users within selected Groups.
Expand an Event Type to see how the work is distributed between Projects
Expand a Group to see the users that are included
Click in the cells of the Event Type and Group where the summary cell is red to see why the workload is not adding up
Tip: Multiple projects can be balanced, for example, teams grouped by geographic locations such as the Los Angeles and London offices.