Planned Work Effort with Time Entry

This article covers the planned work effort set of features and their relations to task durations, time entry, and time management. 

What is "Planed Work Effort"? This is the number of hours you expect a team member will take to get a task done. To compare with the task duration, the duration is the number of days between the start and due dates (inclusive). Whereas, the planned work effort is a more realistic view of how long the work will actually take between the start and due dates. 

How-To Video

Where to find Planned Work Effort

Recipe Task Level

• The task duration and planned work effort fields are set from the duration/work effort button which is to the right end of the task bars as shown:
  
• A newly created task will default to 1 day duration and 8 hours of work effort.
• When you create a project from a recipe, the duration and work effort data is carried over automatically and ready to use.

Project Task Level

• Dash icon between the task's start and due dates — reveals the duration days, planned work effort hours, and the actual work hours.
  - Hover over the dash to get the popup.
  - Click on the dash to activate the fields.
  
  
  The task's duration days and planned work effort hours are either pulled in from the recipe if your project is using a recipe or it's defaulted to 1 day duration and 8 hours of effort for a new task. You can customize it as you wish.
• Task level Time view — The project task has a Time tab in the task description view. Hover over a task, click the description icon to expand, and then click Time. You will then see the tabs Actual, Plan, and Both.
  • Actual tab (default view) is for the assigned team member to enter their work hours.
  • Plan tab is for the member to manage planned work effort hours. 
  • Both tab is to see both the Actual time bar and the Plan time bar.
    

On My Plate Timesheet Level is without the Planned Work Effort

The On My Plate (OMP) Timesheet page is where you enter actual work hours at the project level or the task level in a project. The planned work effort data is not shown on this Timesheet page. See the OMP Timesheet article to learn about how this Timesheet page works for entering actual hours.

How to set up and use Planned Work Effort

How to set up planned work effort on a recipe task

1. Open your recipe and go to a task.
2. On the right of the task bar, click the duration/effort buttons (as shown in the above section)
3. Define your duration days and planned work effort hours for the task based on history or your best estimation.

How to set up planned work effort on a project task

1. Open your project and go to a task.
2. Click the dash icon between the start and due dates to see or to enter the total planned hours.
3. Ensure a team member is assigned to the task and set a start and end date.
4. Expand the task and click the TIME tab as shown in the image below.
5. Scroll to the week for the start and due dates using the arrows on the month calendar (month title popup). If the task's start date is on a different week, the the double arrow to navigate to the next week will be a blue icon to let you know which direction to go to find it.
6. The assigned person will have two time bars. One for their actual work hours and the other for their planned work effort hours. They are both editable. In the following image, Cate hasn't entered hours yet, but her task is showing a total of 16 hours with 8 hours for each day between the start date of 8/23 and the due date of 8/24. The dotted cells represent the work days between the start and due dates (inclusive).
7. To the right of the Planned Effort bar is the total work effort hours. Pie will automatically balance the work hours across the days. 
8. You can modify the total planned work effort hours with the "Edit total hours" button. If you do, Pie will auto rebalance the effort hours for each day. For example, if you change 16 total hours to 10 hours for the two day duration, Pie will auto change the two day hours from 8 to 5 hours.
9. You can modify the planned effort hours. If the total changes, you will be given an update total hours option.
   

How planned work effort works and behaviors

• Default hours when creating a task — Creating a new task will automatically default the duration to 1 day and the planned work effort to 8 hours. This can then be easily edited.
• Auto effort hours for each day — Pie automatically sets the planned work effort hours for each day between the start and due dates. The hours auto set to each day will be based on the total work effort for that task or person assigned to the task (if there are multiple assignees) divided by the number of days.
• Multiple people are assigned to the same task — When you assign more than one team member to a task, all of the planned work effort hours are remain allocated to the first assigned person. You will then need to manually adjust the work effort for each person based on the expected contributions. 
• Smart Balancing (and smart re-balancing) —
  • You change the total work effort on a task: The work effort hours on each day will automatically re-balance. For example, you start with 5 days duration and 40 hours of effort. Each day will have 8 hours of effort. You then change the 40 to 20, then each day will change to 4 hours.
  • You change a day's work effort: You can manually adjust the work effort hours for each day, starting from left to right. When you do this, Pie will re-balance the remaining hours based on the total work effort number. For example, you start with 5 days duration and 20 hours of total work effort so each day has 4 hours. Let's say you change day one's effort from 4 to 2 hours, then Pie will auto re-balance the remaining day's effort, maintaining a total of 20 hours. 
  • You enter actual work hours: Pie will not update the planned work effort hours. They will remain as they were for reference and historical purposes.
  • You move the start and due dates of the task with custom work effort hours: If you change the task's start or due date, or both, Pie will automatically re-balance the work effort hours for each day but will maintain the custom total work effort hours. 
  • If you never customized the total effort hours, but changed the start or due date: Pie will maintain 8 effort hours for each day and the total effort number will auto flex with the duration days.
• You enter planned work effort hours outside of duration days —
  • If the you enter planned work effort hours before (or after) the task's start (or due) date, you will receive a popup message suggesting to change the start (or due) date. You're are not required to change the date, so it's just an awareness notification.
  • If you change the start or due date, the effort hours outside of the duration days will be moved back inside the duration days auto rebalance.
• You change the days' work effort numbers to be above or below the total: Let's say the total planned work effort is 20 hours for a 5-day duration task. Let's say you change the planned work effort hours for each day and the new sum is either above or below the total. Pie will show a button "update total from changes" on the right of the bar. You can then click that to update the total, but first it will popup a warning that this may impact the budget plan if anyone is keeping track of these totals.
• Notification when rebalance results with hours above 8 hours per day:
  • If the rebalance sets a day's hours to be more than 8 and under 12, you will get a lower-left corner slide-in message letting you know it's over 8 hours.
  • If the rebalance sets a day's hours to be more than 12, the message will let you know it's over 12 hours.
• Project Report Budget Burn-Up tab
  • Blue Total Budget line is from Set Up Tab's Planned Hours column and calculated with rates.
  • Projected Billings and Project Internal Cost lines are from project tasks' work effort hours and calculated with the rates. Their color changes based on under or over projection trend related to the Total Budget line.
  • Actual Billings and Actual Internal Costs are from team members' postings of actual hours worked.