Do any of these overall business goals sound familiar?
You want to gain visibility into the clients & tasks that are taking most of your team's time
Ensure you are aligning your estimated time with how the team is actually spending time
Find the most labor-intensive work in your team, and try to optimize this
Document for clients the time you spend above and beyond working on their projects
You're in the right place. We're going to walk through how to configure Hive's Resourcing module, so you can start uncovering these insights and drive some change in your organization!
Note: It's preferable that you're starting with your projects already created & entered in Hive, so check out one of our other Workflow guides if you haven't completed that step yet!
Step 1: Turn on Resourcing in Hive Apps
Head to Apps on the left-hand panel and toggle on Resourcing:
Step 2: Pick your Resourcing "Zoom Level" 🔎 : where do you currently estimate effort for your team's work?
Pick which is closest to what your team does.
a) It's at the task-level - we estimate how long each step in our plan will take, which allows us to be granular.
In this case, we recommend that Timetracking is also toggled on in Hive Apps so that you can enter estimates onto action cards within your plans.
To reiterate, task-based estimates are added per person, per action card
Estimates are usually more granular and are always attached to specific actionable to-dos. Remember actions are things that people can "do" & check off their list
The estimates will follow the project plan, so shifts in the project plan automatically update your Resourcing view
Estimates appear as guidance for individuals about their allocated time, when they look at My Actions view.
Go to each action card where you want to enter time, and use the Estimates section to add the time. Remember to add the due date to the card, so it will be visible within Resourcing.
b) If at the Project-level, you will be using resource assignments: estimates are added per person, at the project level.
This is typically used as broader "buckets" of time for blocking out people's availability in assignments when the exact tasks are not known or the level of granularity is too much to maintain for the team
Resource assignments do not appear in My Actions View - they are not things to be 'completed'
They do not move with project plan updates
Go to the Resourcing View, and double-click onto the individual's line where you want to add the estimate.
Add the project
Adjust the effort
Add the dates
Remember to confirm! (This sends the user a notification)
Step 3: Do you resource by team?
Do your team members have assigned teams that you may want to quickly filter to - i.e., show me the Design Team's workload?
Yes? Create teams & set all employees' teams in the Workspace Setting: click on your profile icon, click Settings, navigate to Teams, click the blue "Create new team"
Step 4: Does your team have specific roles or special skills?
a) Yes! Great, you can go to the Resourcing Setting, go to People, search for a user, click on their name, and then you'll be able to update the user role or User Tag.
b) No, teams is specific enough for my resourcing view. --> No action needed!
Step 5: Do you need to allocate time before you know who can take on the work?
If so, Placeholders are going to assist in making this possible. A placeholder, like "Copywriter" for instance, allows you to assign a task without knowing yet who on your team will take the work. You can see allocations to Placeholders in Resourcing so you know how much work is coming up for a particular team.
To create Placeholders, head to the More > Settings menu in Resourcing and add from there.
Then, on your projects, select the Placeholders you want to include in that project in the Edit Project Screen:
Then finally, assign the action card to the Placeholder Assignee:
*Note: You can also assign an action card to a Placeholder and a User to an action card!
If the Estimated time you added exceeds the available hours of the team member who is assigned to this action, you'll be notified that "This change exceeds <User> availability on <Date>". You can adjust user's availability by going to Resourcing > User Profile > Work week days.
Finally, you're ready for the big step 💪 : Notifying your team of the new resourcing process
We think it's best to call a Team Meeting with anyone involved or impacted by the Resourcing workflow (you can always use our guide for Running Great Meetings).
Make sure you agree on the motions of resourcing your team:
Will you add Estimates & using Placeholders in your Project Templates so you don't need to reinvent the wheel when a new project kicks-off
How will you deal with overallocation (will people work more hours, or will timelines shift, or will more headcount be required)?
Can everyone see Resourcing, or do you need to restrict visibility for any reason? Review that setting here.
Staffing your team appropriately is both art & science, and we're here to provide the platform to host these great masterpieces!