⛳️ Project planning made easy: Auto-scheduling with Gantt Chart Planner for Confluence

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Kick-off 2024 with more efficient project planning right from Confluence!

Every successful project involves many moving parts – the intricate dance of tasks, deadlines, and resources.

The challenge is to bring all the details together, especially when teams create and share information on disparate platforms. 

For instance, project managers initiate a plan on Confluence, teams manage the deliverables on Jira, and all stakeholders monitor the progress on a separate timeline view. 

How can you ensure accurate scheduling and resource allocation efficiently in a dynamic project landscape? 

That’s where Gantt Chart Planner for Confluence comes in!

The app offers a wealth of features that transform your Confluence page into a powerful project management solution, seamlessly integrated with Jira.

• Interactive task breakdown structure and Gantt charts: Create clear and informative visual timelines that communicate project progress and dependencies at a glance.
• Intuitive drag-and-drop scheduling: Easily adjust task dates and assignments with effortless drag-and-drop functionality.
• Effortless resource management: Assign team members to tasks, track workloads, and prevent burnout with advanced resource scheduling features.

In this blog post, you’ll learn more about the intuitive task-scheduling features with Gantt chart.

Getting started: Configure project calendar

You can set the team’s working schedules by configuring the project calendar. The app takes into account this information when calculating the actual task duration. 

For instance, if the task is scheduled to start and finish from Monday to the following Monday, the total duration will be 6 working days.

It’s possible to add extra days off or holidays as well:

Next step: Understand scheduling modes

Planning tasks based on working hours intervals is only the basic feature. With Gantt Chart Planner, you can automate the scheduling by several factors.  

Whether you want to plan out the timeline upfront or rely on Jira task tracking for estimated completion time, the app can accommodate all your needs!

Auto scheduling based on resources, effort, and task duration

Dependencies between tasks 

Gantt Chart Planner respects task dependencies, ensuring tasks are scheduled in the correct order. If you reschedule a task, its corresponding task will be adjusted. 

Resource leveling & Effort based calculation

Gantt Chart Planner intelligently adapts the schedule based on the resource availability, re-optimizing it to maintain project flow. It actively analyzes your schedule and workload, automatically adjusting task durations to prevent resource overload. 

Resource capacity is defined by “Units”

If a person spends the full of their work time on the task during the task span, it would be 100%. If they are at half capacity (e.g., they have another task), you can allocate 50% Units.

You can then determine the scheduling method depending on the following variables.

• Whether the task has a fixed duration (must be completed by the target finish date)

• Whether the task has a fixed effort (the amount of work hours expected to complete it)

• Whether the resource has fixed units (the % of work time)

The auto-scheduling function is based on this formula: Duration * Assignment units = Effort

Whenever you make changes to a task's duration, effort, or assignment units, Gantt Chart Planner instantly recalculates the remaining parameter based on the chosen effort mode.

Fixed Duration	For tasks with set deadlines, like event planning or product launches. You can adjust effort or assignment units as needed.
Fixed Duration (Effort Driven)	Balancing duration and effort to meet the planned delivery date, you can adjust units as needed. Ideal for tasks with flexible resources but fixed effort levels, like development sprints or creative brainstorming.
Fixed Units	Keeps resource allocation consistent, adjusting duration based on changes in effort or units. Suited for tasks with limited staffing or critical resource constraints.
Fixed Units (Effort Driven)	Prioritizes effort while maintaining consistent resource allocation, adjusting duration as needed. Ideal for tasks where effort value is difficult to estimate, like research or design.
Fixed Effort	Locks in the total effort required, adjusting both duration and units to achieve the goal. Useful for tasks with defined effort budgets, like web development or content creation.

Here’s the feature summary: Calculate duration and assignment units using effort 

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Example scenarios:

For this week, Lily Ann is assigned 2 tasks that currently have overlapping schedules. As a result, you can see the highlighted “red” indicating that Lily’s workload has exceeded her capacity.

• Since the tasks have flexible deadlines, we can adjust the schedule to accommodate Lily’s working hours, we’ll select “Fixed Units (Effort Driven”) mode.

• Next, adjust the Resource units accordingly. Since Lily has to work on 2 tasks at the same time, let’s set the Units to 50%.

• The app automatically recalculates the duration based on the additional working hours required for Lily to complete them. So, instead of overworking a resource to complete 2 tasks in 3 days, you’ve now rescheduled them to be done in 6 days.

Let’s say the tasks must be completed within 3 days as originally planned. You can change the Effort Mode to “Fixed Duration (Effort Driven)” - this means we can consider reallocating resources to work on these tasks. 

• In this case, we’ll go ahead and assign Jake to assist Lily on both tasks. They will split the tasks between them, so we set the Units allocation 50% each.

• This change ensures that Lily’s working schedule remains at 8 hours per day (the allocation column turns “green”) and the tasks will be completed as planned. 

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Manually scheduled option

The app also accommodates project execution outside of Gantt, which means you can manually adjust the task duration.

You’ll see this option by toggle the column “Manually Scheduled”, make sure the box is checked. A common use case for manually scheduled tasks is when you integrate with Jira projects. 

This option is enabled for task-specific, so you can still coordinate the project execution without affecting the rest of the plan. 

Read more about Jira integration.

Plan and schedule your projects to success! 

Whether you're a seasoned project manager or a budding planner, Gantt Chart Planner for Confluence empowers you to create efficient and achievable project plans. Take advantage of the auto-scheduling feature and unlock a world of effortless project management, where tasks align seamlessly, resources are balanced, and deadlines are met with confidence.

Ready to experience the magic of auto-scheduling?

Start your free trial of Gantt Chart Planner for Confluence today and transform your project planning process!