What is the best way to manage workload per person?
Hi,
I was hoping someone could help, I'm currently brainstorming ideas for a potential solution to pitch to my boss.
The way we currently do planning for our marketing agency is this:
- Go through Wrike and update all tasks
- Update an excel spreadsheet template we have per each client based on the updated tasks for the upcoming sprint (SUPER REDUNDANT)
- Meet to hash out planning as a team
- Go back and update Wrike (usually done through the planning meeting so not too redundant)
Admittedly, this system doesn't work well, but it is how we've been doing it. The reason why is because I am able to schedule each person's estimate contribution to each task in our templated spreadsheet. (Example: For a blog, I assign 2 hours to the writer, 30 minutes to the editor, 30 minutes to the designer, 30 minutes to the account manager, etc... Since there is one task for this blog and the description has all the roles and steps, we are constantly passing tasks back and forth depending on the status). That's why the Total Allocation work field doesn't do much for me since I can't allocate work per person on a select task.
I'm considering a solution that could include having 1 overall task (example - blog) and then having separate sub tasks assigned for each role (so i can allocate work per person through sub tasks), but was wondering if anyone had any thoughts or experiences to share on this, any ideas for potential solutions, or any insights on how you do planning for an agile-based marketing agency.
Thanks,
Ryan
Ryan,
Ideally, resource allocation will capture your use case in future editions, but at this time I think you are best served moving your main work entity from tasks to projects in Wrike. For example: You could have a Folder as a customer, a project as a project and task as a task. This way you can allocate work on task basis. The negative side to this approach is that you will have more tasks and less "task hand offs," but it is cleaner than creating sub tasks. This is also will make reporting easier (if you have the business tier) as you can create a dynamic report per customer folder.
Let me know if this is helpful. Happy to add more detail.
Agreed. No need for the Excel spreadsheet. Just create folders for each client and then create projects within those folders and assign tasks out as needed. For my projects, the first task is for our team to meet and discuss the project and see if any changes need to be made to the assigned tasks. However, these changes should be minimal since you should be using a streamline project template for similar projects. I leave sub tasks open for the individual task owner to create and use as they would like. Hope this helps!