Jira Resource Planning with non-HR resources allocated

[Stefan Haller]

Hi all,

I'm looking for the best way to solve a resource planning problem involving machinery as a resource.

Use case is the processing of an order in a business process implemented in Jira. Each order (issue type) is processed like a small project, broken down into a work units (sub tasks). These subtasks need to be planned on a timeline based on availability of required, specialised resources. Most work is manual and use of jira makes sense, but some activities involve long processing on limited and specialised machinery. So you would need to "assign" the issue to a user, but reserve processing time on hardware equipment as well.

Just allocating machinery in a custom field won't do, as it is important to be able to allocate processing time based on available capacity on the time line.

I think Tempo Planner or even BigPicture etc. could probably be used quite well if we invent "users that are no real users" for such hardware resources. Then, their capacity usage could be planned like for people. But:

• Usage is of course a bit awkward, as machines become part of the "team".
• It requires activities to be broken down into a machine work and a manual labour-part as otherwise you cannot have two resources assigned (this problem does not exist with Tempo Planner, afaik, as you can plan work for multiple resources on the same issue).
• Equipment might require Jira licenses, so if you have many specialised equipment to plan, user licenses need to be bought for hardware equipment. Of course, it could be discussed if this could actually make sense, but of course it is awkward when you have much more machinery licenses than actual human operators.

Well, I just wondered if somebody had a better idea than just take Tempo Planner and try to masquerade machinery as users. A larger custom development is too expensive.

[Wee_Chin_Wong]

@Stefan Haller Did you manage to figure out a solution for this? I'm currently trying to do the same thing for my use case where I need to allocate non-HR resources as well such as tools, machinery, equipment, etc. Had the same thought about using users as a proxy for machinery but that would mean needing to get additional licenses which wouldn't really make sense. 

[Stefan Haller]

Hi @Wee_Chin_Wong

Well, yes, though, not really perfect. With Tempo Planner I could not find a solution around licensing users for each machinery/equipment and dropped it for that reason.

I solved this with the rather new Structure.Gantt-Plugin and a custom hw resource field. This worked quite well. What I could not solve smoothly is that each task requires both HR-resources and machinery in my use case and both need to be planned at the same time. I did some Script Runner-Scripts to help plan, but it is only a cumbersome solution in that regard.

BigPicture might work as well as Structure.Gantt, but as BigPicture is so slow when dealing with large plans, I prefered the latter.