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Are you tired of guessing which of your team members has the right skills and bandwidth for a new project? Do you need to staff a project with a specific role, like a QA engineer or a UX designer, but aren't sure who is available? These common challenges highlight the need for a targeted Jira report to resource planning.
This is where ActivityTimeline's Position Availability Report comes in. It's a powerful forecasting tool that helps you move beyond reactive staffing and into strategic talent allocation. Instead of simply looking at who's free, you can see precisely when people with a specific position or skill set are available, ensuring your projects are staffed with the right expertise from the very beginning.
What Is the Position Availability Report in ActivityTimeline?
The Position Availability Report is a specialized forecasting tool within ActivityTimeline that helps you assess the availability of your workforce based on their assigned positions or skills. Unlike other reports that focus on overall team workload, this report provides a granular, role-based view of your team's capacity. It's a key feature for identifying resource gaps and proactively staffing projects.
As a forecasting report, it bases its insights on the remaining time estimates of scheduled Jira tasks and other planned work, giving you a forward-looking perspective on your team's capacity.
Using the Report for Strategic Staffing
To get the most out of the Position Availability Report, you can generate it with a few key configurations:
- Define Your Criteria: You must first select the primary reporting criteria, such as viewing data by Position or skill, and choose whether to display the data by day, week, or month.
- Select a Timeframe: Next, choose the timeframe you want to analyze, typically for the next 10 weeks by default.
- Refine Inclusions: Customize your report by including placeholders or bookings to get a more comprehensive view of planned work.
- Choose Your Format: You can view the report directly in your browser or export it as an Excel file for further analysis.
The output is a clear, visual table that displays available user positions on the left side, with numbers in the cells indicating how many people in that position are available during the selected period. This makes it simple to see where you have available resources and where potential shortages may exist.
Real-World Use Cases: Staffing for Success
The practical applications of the Position Availability Report extend across several core staffing and resource planning activities. By leveraging position and skill metadata within ActivityTimeline, you can transform how you staff projects and manage your workforce.
Identifying Resource Gaps Proactively
Position and skill information can be used to quickly identify which skills are available for an upcoming project and spot any missing skills needed to meet new demands. For example, if your new project requires a UX designer and your report shows no one with that position available in the next two months, you know to begin recruitment or upskilling efforts immediately.
Creating Dynamic, Functional Teams
ActivityTimeline allows you to create teams dynamically (known as Functional Teams) based on specific user skills or positions. This means the system automatically includes anyone who matches the chosen attribute, eliminating the need for manual team roster updates. For instance, you could create a "Designers" team that automatically includes every user tagged with the "Designer" position.
Advanced Searching for the Right Talent
The platform's advanced search capabilities enable you to find the right people for the job quickly. You can perform a targeted search for users based on their skills and positions directly from the Planner view. For instance, a manager can search for a user with the skill "Java" within a specific team to find the best-suited resource for a task.
Pinpointing Availability for Critical Tasks
The general ability to generate reports based on a position or skill set allows managers to proactively monitor when specific resources are available. This is invaluable for preventing overbooking specialized resources, a common pitfall that can lead to project bottlenecks and team burnout.
Conclusion
The Position Availability Report in ActivityTimeline is more than just a report; it's a strategic tool for workforce management. By providing clear, data-driven insights into resource availability based on positions and skills, it empowers project managers and team leads to make smarter staffing decisions. This proactive approach helps to ensure that every project is set up for success, staffed with the right people at the right time, and free from the chaos of unexpected resource shortages.
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