Project Oversight: Identifying the Critical Components to Track in Your Project Management

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Effective project management is a multifaceted process that involves numerous tasks, resources, and timelines. Identifying and managing critical components is essential for ensuring successful project completion. In this article, we will explore three crucial elements in project management: Resource Capacity Planning, Time Tracking, and Issue Tracking. 

Resource Capacity Planning

Successful project management cannot be imagined without resource capacity planning, ensuring well-balanced resources (employees and non-human resources) capable of meeting project demands efficiently.

Before starting a project, you need to evaluate the scope and available resources very accurately to ensure that the resource workload and availability are balanced.  This will help to avoid resource bottlenecks and project delays and save precious time. 

Capacity planning encompasses a strategic approach to resource allocation and optimization. By understanding the unique skills and capabilities of team members, project managers can make informed decisions regarding task assignments.

Resource capacity planning extends beyond the initial project planning phase, involving ongoing evaluation throughout the project lifecycle. It is not a one-time task, it’s a continuous process that should always be on track and up to date, so Project Managers need to monitor and analyze project data, modernize the workflow, and adjust an overall project plan if needed. Continuous monitoring and adjustment are essential throughout the project lifecycle to adapt to changing demands.    

Time Tracking

Time tracking is a critical element that plays a pivotal role in project success. It also supplements resource planning, allowing an understanding of where teams spend their time and comparing initial project plans with actual results. 

Accurate time tracking provides insights into how efficiently resources are utilized, allowing for better planning and allocation in subsequent project phases. Furthermore, it enhances transparency, as stakeholders can assess project progress and ensures correct accountability and trust within the project team.

Issue Tracking

Issue tracking is a proactive component that involves a systematic approach to recognizing, documenting, and managing tasks as they arise. From the moment of the backlog creation till the issue resolution, Managers need to categorize tasks by their complicity and urgency to prioritize and assign them to the right resources. 

Effective issue tracking not only minimizes potential negative impacts on the project but also provides valuable insights for continuous improvement. This includes anything that may hinder the smooth execution of the project, such as resource constraints or unexpected delays. 

By incorporating tools like ActivityTimeline and Time in Status for Jira, you can enhance your project management capabilities, streamline workflows, and ensure the successful delivery of projects. Let’s dive deeper into each add-on.

ActivityTimeline is a resource planning and time tracking add-on for Jira, that helps with resource capacity management, simplifies issue scheduling, and improves reporting capabilities.  

Time in Status for Jira - Reports | Charts | Dashboard is an add-on to enhance Jira's reporting capabilities by providing detailed insights into the time issues spent in different statuses. It automatically generates reports, charts, and dashboards, allowing users to track and visualize the time an issue remains in specific statuses. 

ActivityTimeline for Jira - Streamlining Resource Management

ActivityTimeline serves as a resource planning and time-tracking application designed to facilitate the organization of team and individual tasks and workloads. It offers a consolidated perspective on all projects and tasks, enabling users to plan and monitor work time through the use of timesheets. Additionally, the tool generates numerous reports to enhance the efficiency of planning.

This application aids in comprehending resource allocation across the organization by presenting a comprehensive overview of shared resources and project tasks in a centralized location.

It offers an all-encompassing Planning Dashboard featuring user and team timelines. From this dashboard, you can schedule Jira issues or create new tasks seamlessly, ensuring a clear understanding of responsibilities and deadlines.

Users can effortlessly generate, edit, and visualize project schedules, fostering efficient communication and collaboration among team members.

ActivityTimeline enables users to obtain a thorough overview of resource availability, workloads, and allocation. This functionality empowers project managers to make informed decisions when delegating tasks and ensures optimal utilization of resources.

The app introduces a Team Panel alongside the individual user timeline feature, providing teams with the capability for strategic planning and improved supervision. This specialized team calendar streamlines the distribution of resources and scheduling, allowing users to formulate comprehensive plans over different timeframes, be they months or quarters.

The Team Panel additionally provides a clear representation of workloads across teams, greatly simplifying extensive planning for individual teams or the entire organization.

With the help of the various resources and project reports, you can oversee the user utilization rate: 

Or compare initial project plans with the actual results: 

Various charts will also help Managers understand the resource distribution across different projects: 

Users can record time on Jira issues directly within the application's planning dashboard or from their workspace. The time-logging procedure is both straightforward and expeditious, eliminating the need for users to spend valuable time inputting data into Excel or external timesheet tables.

All work logs are preserved and can subsequently be employed to produce Timesheets within ActivityTimeline. A variety of options cater to different preferences, allowing the generation of team and user timesheets for projects, issues, or epics. Users can incorporate Jira filters and differentiate between billable and non-billable hours.

With ActivityTimeline the management of the resource becomes simple. Both user and team timelines contain special workload indicators, that help to understand whether the team members or teams are overloaded (red indicator), overloaded (yellow indicator) or the workload is ok (the green indicator).

Leave management features are also included. The application offers internal events for monitoring and overseeing non-working days. Default events encompass holidays, vacations, sick leaves, and days off.

Managers can track non-working days with Leave Reports: 

Effortlessly handle vacations or sick leave on the timelines to determine when a team member will be unavailable for work. Each user is equipped with a distinct workload indicator, revealing the daily working hours. Upon creating a vacation or similar event, the indicator is adjusted to reflect non-working hours.

Create Holiday Schemes and assign them to teams effortlessly: 

ActivityTimeline for Jira enhances project planning and execution by providing an advanced timeline view offering a visual representation of project tasks, milestones, and deadlines,  and additional features to streamline project management. This visual approach makes it easier for project managers and team members to understand the project's overall timeline and identify critical dependencies.

It provides a clear overview of resource allocation and workload for team members. Managers can optimize resource distribution, ensuring that team members are appropriately assigned to tasks and that workloads are balanced for efficient project execution.

The add-on enhances Jira's reporting capabilities by providing detailed analytics on project progress, team performance, and potential roadblocks, so Managers can make data-driven decisions based on insights gained from the analytics, ensuring a proactive approach to project management.

Time in Status for Jira - Comprehensive Reporting and Analysis

7 report types, including Time in Status, Assignee Time, Average Time, etc.

Time in Status for Jira  includes 7 types of the Jira time spent reports, which include all the data for qualitative analysis of the team performance.

To generate the Jira time in status report, you should choose the time in status one from the drop-down list.

Define the necessary filter for the report, such as specific projects, issue types, assignees, etc to get precise results.

Sprint Performance Report

The Sprint Performance Report aims to provide transparency and accountability to stakeholders and facilitate continuous improvement in the development process. A report is generated after every sprint and is used as a tool for planning and organizing the next sprint.

The Sprint Performance Report offers an in-depth view of your sprint's progress and performance, including the following key metrics:

Team Velocity - measure your team's pace and understand how much work they have done.

Workload - the volume of work assigned to individual team members.

Completion Rate - analyze how effectively your team meets their commitments and sprint goals.

Committed and Completed - сompare the tasks planned versus the tasks successfully finished.

Scope Change - see how many SPs were added or removed after the start of the sprint.

You can view this report only on boards where sprints are enabled.

Data analysis options, including Power BI and Google Sheets integration

Also add-on has Gadget – the tool that lets you monitor customized reports from the app on the Jira dashboard. All add-on reports are available in this gadget and you can control time in status data in the Issue List or Chart View.

Another viewing option for visual and numerical data is the issue view screen.

Just choose Time in status at the Activity menu of a single issue. Select one of 4 reports: Time in Status, Assignee time, Status and Transition Count. Also, you can configure Metrics and Calendar options here.

Real-world Use Cases: Time in Status

One of the most prominent problems managers face in Jira is calculating cycle and lead time for Jira issues. Let's consider a situation:

A team has many simultaneous issues to address, queries are in "waiting" status, and there is no solution to track the team's performance and working efficiency. You should establish an effective process monitoring system to keep the deadline and project flexible. 

Cycle time is the time from the beginning to the end of a specific action. It is the time during which the issue is marked as In progress. 

Lead time means a more extended period: from receiving a request for an action to the moment this action is completed (including the time in the queue).

Time in Status for Jira lets you get Cycle and Lead time by setting the Status Groups. You can configure it in the Column Manager with the statuses drop-down list. You can choose the statuses you want to include in Cycle or Lead Time in your workflow.

1. In the Columns, choose Status Groups;
2. Click Add New Group;

3. Select statuses;
4. Write down Group Name (Cycle or lead);
5. Click Save button;

You can customize your reports with Cycle or Lead Tіme:

• Choose the necessary issue list from projects and sprints, and apply flexible filters with tags. 
• Set the appropriate date range and data format.
• Exclude non-working hours from the Cycle or Lead Time calculation with a multi-calendar. 

You can use such report types for Cycle or Lead Time as:

• Average Cycle or Lead Tіme (in the Average time report), 
• Cycle and Lead Time for every assignee (in the Assignee time report), 
• Cycle or Lead Tіme per Date (in the Time in Status per Date report), 
• Status Count — how often the issue was in the Status Group statuses. 

Monitoring reports in detail allows data to be exported to Excel or Google Sheets (XLSX or CSV formats).

Effectively managing cycle and lead time in Jira is paramount for project managers facing challenges in tracking team performance and meeting deadlines. To address this, Time in Status for Jira emerges as a powerful solution, allowing you to gain insights and optimize workflows.

What our users say about this feature:

Real-world Use Cases: Activity Timeline

ActivityTimeline is suitable for teams of any type and size. Managers, facing challenges in coordinating and managing multiple projects simultaneously, find this tool facilitative. With teams working remotely, communication gaps and project timeline delays become common issues, but the implementation of the ActivityTimeline app enhances collaboration and project efficiency.

The app is very helpful for remote teams struggling with project coordination and those who have difficulty visualizing and managing resource capacity. Another common problem is the lack of a centralized platform for task assignments and updates.

ActivityTimeline, with its intuitive project management features, provides a comprehensive solution to these challenges:

Centralized Planning Dashboard

Teams can create centralized project dashboards, providing an overview of all ongoing projects. Interactive timeline features allow teams to visualize project milestones, deadlines, and dependencies in a single view.

Efficient Task Assignments

Team members easily assigned and received tasks, with clear deadlines and responsibilities, reducing confusion and delays.

Real-time Collaboration

ActivityTimeline's real-time collaboration features facilitated seamless communication, enabling team members to discuss tasks and share updates directly within the app.

Robust Reporting

The app's reports provide Project Managers with detailed insights into project progress, task completion rates, and potential bottlenecks.

Time Tracking

The time-tracking feature allows team members to log hours spent on tasks, providing accurate data for project cost estimation and resource planning.

By combining ActivityTimeline and Time in Status for Jira, you can optimize resource utilization, streamline project workflows, and gain valuable insights into issue tracking and time management.

Seize the opportunity to revolutionize your project management in Jira. Activate, amplify, explore, and optimize with ActivityTimeline and Time in Status today! 

✅ Dive into the world of intuitive project management with ActivityTimeline. Explore the features that can transform the way your teams collaborate and execute projects. To learn more, visit ActivityTimeline for detailed information. Request a personalized demonstration to see firsthand how the app can address your specific project management challenges. Schedule your demo here. 

✅ Ready to get started? Try Time In Status for Jira for free. You can also book a live demo - we'll show you the application inside out and answer all your questions.