Project planning: estimate, workload, deadline

If you are a project manager on a tight budget, accurate time estimation is a key skill. It is important that you get time estimates right for all your tasks and more generally for all your task lists to get your project costing right especially if you are billing a customer for it.

In GroupCamp Project you can enter the time estimate for a task. This will give you a total of time estimates per task list. By using time estimates project managers can pre-configure a project before the project is launched by specifying the key milestones for the project and describing the resources needed for a project. The project manager can then have a fully calibrated project that can be shown to the management team for decision-making about scope, priority and budget.

This allows project leads to check whether their estimation makes sense based on the availability of internal resources.

Managing workload per user

Once the time estimates are entered for each project, you can filter your task application to have a view of the total time estimate for a particular project member. The total time estimate for a given project members gives an idea of the workload for that particular project member. It allows project managers to make decisions on resource allocation or on setting new priorities on the different tasks required within the project.

Managing workload per task type

The Task application allow project managers to set types on each and every task. When using task types,  it is possible to have a view of the total time estimates for every task type. For example, if you have a task list for « New customer request » and your tasks are cross-referenced with « Design » and « IT », you will obtain time estimates totals for both the workload represented by the new customer request and the load for the IT group and the Design group for that activity.