Hub Planner takes a deep dive into 5 of the most common workflow scenarios you may find yourself facing as a project manager, and highlights how these are solved using their fantastic scheduling software. The modern project manager is faced with many challenges, some of which are tedious to solve and inefficient in practice. Hub Planner’s approach is to tackle these scenarios head on and provide a time-saving solution.
1. Matching Resources by Skills and Type
A very common working scenario we often find is trying to match resources based on client and task requirements.
Scenario: A new week-long design assignment just came in from a client. They need the work completed ASAP and want to know how soon the work can be delivered. The job requires a full-time designer, someone who knows Adobe Illustrator and is located in our New York office so they can meet with the client.
Solution: You need to quickly find out what resources you have available that match the requirements, and can take on the work. Every resource in Hub Planner can be tagged using Custom Fields. You create a skill, location and role matrix for example. In the scheduler you need to simply type in your requirements and all resources matching these requirements and their availability will show up on the scheduler. Now you have visibility to schedule the work.
2. Scheduling pipeline work
New business negotiations are constantly happening. Very often we are faced with a situation where we take on future work, but not sure yet which exact resource will do this.
Scenario: A client has budget approved for a new phase of a project but it does not need to kick off until 2 months from now. We need to be able to start to spec out a plan and need somewhere to schedule this work ahead of time. You don’t know what resources will work on it yet, but know the estimated time it would take.
Solution: When we don’t know which resource will carry out the task, the best thing to do is to create a skills category, where you can plan the work. For example, a “Development” category. Hub Planner’s Unassigned Work Feature allows you to create these working categories and schedule jobs against them. This creates a demand on your company, with the supply being your resource pool. You can easily schedule the work to real resources when you know when, or see the potential need to hire new.
3. Real-time remote availability checking
Did you ever get a phone call from your business manager or CEO asking you “Do we have anyone available, I’m talking with Apple and they need a prototype done ASAP?” The time taken to connect all the dots in most situations can be a time consuming and inefficient.
Scenario: You are meeting a client in Times Square. They are throwing new business at you, but you are unsure what our team availability is like at the moment and you need to make an informed decision and get the business before they go elsewhere.
Solution: The easiest solution is to use the Hub Planner mobile web application, to see a real-time calendar of your team’s schedule and availability. You can already pencil them in on the spot so they are reserved. Hub Planner’s mobile web app lets you quickly check the availability of any resource on your team through a slick interface.
4. I need a visual guide on who is available
The time people have right now to digest information is very little. Of course, you can generate reports that are detailed and precise, but what we need is a quick bird’s eye overview of your schedule that is easy to digest and visually concise.
Scenario: Monday morning meeting. The CEO and Senior Producers have 5-minute huddle to level set on what is coming up, who is available, who is on vacation and who has nothing to do.
Solution: Transparency in the schedule is key to running your business efficiently.Hub Planner allows you to see a Heat Map style interface of all your resources showing simply their status, being under-booked, fully booked, over booked or not booked at all. This visual feedback is priceless is seeing the bigger picture of your team, department or the entire business.
5. Are we on budget?
It might be internal or external, but either way most projects being managed have some sort of budget control. Staying on track is important and being able to understand that quick as you schedule even more.
Scenario: You have a project budget and you want to see immediate real-time impact as you schedule upcoming tasks, but also the impact of potential tasks too.
Solution: Every time you make any changes to the schedule, Hub Planner immediately updates the budget information. Making it really simple to understand what you have remaining and to what extent you’re financially on track.
Hub Planner is an online scheduling, planning, and timesheet solution. If you are a Project Manager, then you should be checking it out to automate some of the management activities you are doing today. They offer a generous free 60 days to evaluate the service, with amazing support and a solid solution.
Related Lists of Tools:
- Project Workflow Software
- Approval Workflow Software For Project Managers
- Your Guide To Workflow Automation & The Software Tools
- Mavenlink Competitors And Alternatives
The Digital Project Manager is reader-supported. When you click through links on our site, we may earn a commission. Learn more.