Individual resource management (absence and warning)

[jbeg]

I will break down the whole topic in one simple question:

How to get a warning or a notification in Portfolio or in jira if you assign someone to an issue which need to be worked on while the assignee is abscent in this timespan? (And why is there a global availbility field if it is not used in portfolio?)

Some more detailed questions:

We need to see the capacity of our individual developers as we dont use Teams at all. How can I see this? In the old Portfolio it was possible to switch to the capacity view und you could easily see everyone remaining capacity. This is somehow missing now (but is key-feature of this whole platform.. at least for us).

What is the intended use of the absence dates for team members if there are no warnings shown when an abscent dev is assigned to an issue which target start and end date are within the abscene timespan?

How can we use portfolio for time management, if there is focus on individual resources and their availbility and absences? Do i need to create a team for every single dev? (as i said, we do not have nor want teams).

The more we use the new portfolio, the more features are missing from the old perspective...

[jbeg]

Because of the answer from @Roi Fine i tried to find a solution for a useable capacity planing with teams but I failed... help me out what went wrong:

Two Projects: P1 and P2

Three Developers D1, D2 and D3

One team T1 with all three developers. Every Dev has a weekly capacity of 40h. Combined team capacity is therefore 120h.

Three Issues in P1 which are assigned to each dev. One Issue in P2 which is assigned to D1. 

Now i set the target start and end dates of the issue from D1 in both projects to an overlapping timespan. Issue from P1 is two weeks. Issue from P2 is one Week in the middle of the first issue. Next i set the estimated time from the 2w issue to the full 2w capacity (80h) so that D1 capacity is depleted in this timespan. Last I set the estimated time of the second issue from P2 to 40h. At this point I would HIGHLY expect a warning that there is no capacity left for D1 for this task - which is NOT happening. 

Do I only get a warning if the combined team capacity is overestimated? 

What am I missing here? Help me out please. In my eyes, this behaviour is a bug.

[Roi Fine]

Hi @jbeg 

Firstly, thanks for your feedback. We noted your feature suggestion.

The approach for capacity planning in the new UI is more lightweight. In our research, we found that adding the individuals' absences in the old UI was a cumbersome and redundant activity.

We are constantly building more features in this area. But are our main focus at the moment is to build more features around the team velocity, rather than individuals.  

Portfolio's mission is to be the "team of teams" agile planning tool. To drive that first, we need to surface teams' velocities and allow effective what-if scenario planning based on those.

If that approach doesn't work, I'd love to hear why, and remind you that you can always switch to the old interface.

I hope the above answer helps,

Roi | Product Manager

[jbeg]

Hi @Roi Fine 

thank you for your answer. 

In our research, we found that adding the individuals' absences in the old UI was a cumbersome and redundant activity.

But how does the new planning interface handles the absence of developers? Does this only affect teams? As I said, we do not use teams at all ... I find no solution in your answer how we can manage abscence of assignees in Portfolio and get the apropiate warnings? 

But are our main focus at the moment is to build more features around the team velocity, rather than individuals. Portfolio's mission is to be the "team of teams" agile planning tool. To drive that first, we need to surface teams' velocities and allow effective what-if scenario planning based on those.

I get the ambition behind that - but why remove the feature for individuals? Why disregard the "what-if scenarios" for individuals? Even with the growing numbers of developers we have, we do not work with teams - because it just does not work for our development process and furthermore it is just not possible because of very special qualifications and tasks. The majority of our issues can not be assigned to a team of people, only to the specialist for this issue.

... and remind you that you can always switch to the old interface.

Simple answer: The old inteface is a usability nightmare. We decided to go with Portfolio  because it was said (in a Jira webinar and on some roadmap) that it is being worked on bringing the capacity management like in the old perspective to the new one... I read your answer that this is not happening, nor planned at all.

Sure, we can try to adapt to these "limitations" and continue to use Portfolio - but why should we adapt to the tool? It should be the other way round ;)

We will try to find a solution withing Jira and Portfolio for our needs and maybe rethink our decision to go with Portfolio after the first year. Maybe a project planning perspective which focus is not only on the "agile-way" is more fitting for us.

[Narender Singh]

Hello All,

Do we have an answer for this problem? I am facing similar issue with limited features and integration within Team features, it looks like a disconnected features.

Thanks and regards,

Narender