Why and How to Plan - Essential Planning Strategies

Why and How to Plan

Why? | Plan for the Long Term | Plan in Detail Promptly | Plan Provisionally | Planning Leads

Why?

Capacity is often overestimated

Typically, there is an overestimation of which projects can be accommodated within a given timeframe with the current staff. A balanced workload is crucial for employee motivation—occasional peaks are normal in the service industry—but constant overload leads to a poor work environment and high turnover. Training new staff incurs additional costs and slows down existing teams.

Coordinate interests, reduce rush

Resource planning acts as the reservation system for the entire company. It brings together various interests within this tool. Using this tool company-wide reduces the daily rush. Just like on an airplane, a seat cannot be occupied by multiple people (in our case, projects).

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Stakeholder groups

Project Manager
The PM wants resources guaranteed for their projects. They want no project competition for the employee, as this could jeopardize the completion of their project. They coordinate with other project managers, the team leader (regarding leave), and the employee during planning.

Team Leader
The TL is responsible for maximizing their team's workload. They strive to balance absences (holidays), internal and external projects.

Salesperson
The salesperson must always know which resources they can sell and must sell, otherwise, they risk making false statements to potential clients or failing to meet their targets.

Entrepreneur
The entrepreneur wants to understand the company's workload and take appropriate actions (marketing, sales, hiring/firing).

These roles can also be combined in one person.

Plan for the Long Term

Lay out larger projects completely and roughly in the planning

To be able to make statements about capacities and utilization in the coming months, a long-term, rough planning of the budgeted time efforts makes sense. This is less about individual hours.

Keeps the planning simple and tangible.
In contrast to detailed planning, this method greatly reduces the maintenance effort. 

Utilize but do not overload

Capacities are often overestimated. We recommend planning only about 70-75% of the daily target for rough planning. So, for an 8-hour day, not 8 hours but only 5-6 hours. The difference serves as a buffer for e.g., meetings, spontaneous deployments, spontaneous small projects.

A utilization of 60% is generally considered to be cost-covering. If a person is constantly over-planned, it leads to overload. Overload results in poorly running projects, higher sickness rates, costly new hires, which could have been avoided with good planning.

Plan in Detail Promptly

Plan the upcoming 2-4 weeks in more detail

The rough planning helps to estimate the workload weeks and months in advance. Small projects and spontaneous tasks often become clear only at very short notice – here, the rough planning for the coming weeks can be adjusted as needed and made more detailed.

Record times on tasks

Scheduled individuals can have the projects displayed directly in the time tracking system and book hours on them.
Learn more about time tracking on tasks

Plan Provisionally

Mark entries as provisional if they should not yet affect a specific person's workload. 

You can find this option in the entry under "Additional Options" or by right-clicking in the menu.
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The yellow highlight in the image shows how the provisional marking frees up the schedulable remaining hours for the person.

Display in the Report

The annual overview shows the schedulable remaining hours per month and team or person with and without provisionally planned projects.
More about the report

Planning Leads

Use capacity planning to identify bottlenecks early on. To do this, you place leads into the planning – and can adopt the planning when creating a project.

Planned leads are displayed in white with a dashed border as opposed to projects (see title image). The color is selectable or adjustable, just like with projects.

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Adopting the planning when creating a project

When you get commissioned, you set the lead to "Won" and create the project. If you select the checkbox "Adopt planning" in this step, all planning entries are transferred to the project.

Adjusting entries later
You can also adjust an entry later by simply choosing the new project instead of the lead. With a series entry, this changes all entries with one click.

Lead lost
If you do not get the contract, you set the lead to "Lost" or "Cancelled". As with an archived project, you are made aware of entries that may need to be deleted through softened entries.

Deactivating leads for planning

The planning of leads can also be deactivated in the settings under "Planning".

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Planning settings

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