Resource planning of physical objects (or virtual assignees)

Question

Hello,

We have test equipment that certain issues need to use and want to make sure we are not over-scheduling the equipment. We are using one of the gantt chart add-ons to see resource management, but that's only for real people/assignees.

Is there a way to do virtual assignees (but then can we have both a virtual (ie test equipment) and real person assigned) so we can see resource loading?

Or can we add a custom field for the equipment that can still be picked up by the gantt chart add-ons as "resources"?

Eugene Sokhransky _ALM Works_ · Answer

Hi Casey,

You can actually keep it synchronized in both directions - structures can visualize existing relations like links or epic links and when you make changes in the structure - the corresponding relationships will be updated.

For example if you have a high level initiative linked with a "contains" Jira link to an epic, moving an epic in the structure under another initiative will update this Jira link. Or if you create a new epic in the structure under an initiative - the link will be created automatically. The same can work for working with stories under epics, for example.

So when you are looking at an issue, you do see all the relations too. You can also see structure on the issue page, which is especially useful if you have multilevel hierarchy - with this widget you can trace the entire hierarchy easily - for example, from the sub-task level all the way up to the initiative.

We'll be happy to show how this works in practice if this makes sense. Please feel free to contact me directly at eugene@almworks.com or our support team at support@almworks.com.

Thank you,

Eugene

Casey Schulz · Answer

Eugene,

Thanks for your reply. We did try Structure, but we found it was only good for visualization as it does not push the hierarchy concept back to the actual JIRA issues.

Eugene Sokhransky _ALM Works_ · Answer

Hello Casey,

My name is Eugene and I work for ALM Works. Our solution might be a bit of an overkill, but it certainly does what you are looking for. Our Gantt can pick resources from a custom field or a combination of fields and show allocation chart for them:

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/apps/1217809/structure-gantt-planning-at-scale

https://wiki.almworks.com/display/gantt/Resource+Management

The Gantt itself is free, but it works as an extension to our core product Structure, which is used for building the work breakdown structures for the Gantt, and it does cost a fair bit. Structure on it's own is a powerful and very flexible tool, which brings the concept of hierarchy into Jira. It helps users manage complex projects, oversee the work of multiple teams and is useful whenever you need to organize large amounts of issues and calculate and show all kinds of metrics for them.

https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.almworks.jira.structure/server/overview

Maybe you'll find a good use case for it too.

Please note that both products are for Jira Server/DC only. We are working on the could version, but it will take us some time to get there.

Please don't hesitate to contact us at support@almworks.com if there are any questions or there is anything we can help with.

Regards,

Eugene [ALM Works]