Allocate resources based on skills
Asked by darianah:

Hello,

We have frontend and backend developers, as well as frontend designers, we create separate tasks for frontend, backend and frontend designers, as they take different amount of time depending on the complexity of the task.

How can I make portfolio allocate tasks to the right people? I looked at the stages and skills and they don't work for us because the % of time is not fixed and they are not necessary done in certain order.

Please help,

Dariana


Answers:
author: Bojana Mandic
body: Hi Rhys,

Looking at your example in the screenshot what happens if we say that on IOS-12 we need the skillset of a front-end and back-end developer (2 for frontend and 3 for backend). I make the estimations in Pordolio but the values are not seen in Jira by the developers. Is there a way to get them to see the info in their Jira ticket as well. (Not to change the estimate, just see)?

Bojana


author: Rhys Christian
body: Hey Dariana,

Firstly just a quick note: skills \& stages features are quite advanced features and we generally recommend that you understand how Portfolio's algorithm works outside of stages \& skills before jumping into it.

If you're feeling confident with your understanding of how calculations work then for your use case I recommend using skills and not using stages since there's no particular order them. Since each task represents a different 'skill' you'd need to set the specific skill estimate for each issue - i.e apply the specific estimate for the skill directly on the skill estimate column (when you expand the estimate column). i.e:

![Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 4.47.29 pm.png](https://community.atlassian.com/t5/image/serverpage/image-id/7671iD6EAEFB749314777/image-dimensions/434x156?v=v2 "Screen Shot 2017-10-13 at 4.47.29 pm.png")

I acknowledge this requires some manual work to apply the estimates to each issue but this will make sure each issue accurately represents the amount of time required for each task depending on the complexity.

I agree for your use case the % breakdown in the skills page isn't ideal for you since they are independent per issue - but you don't really need to be concerned about this if you set the estimate directly to the skill.  
For your case you'd be better off being able to set the specific skill on the issue that it needs. For this improvement please vote and watch this ticket for updates: <https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JPOSERVER-1688>  

Please let me know how this works for you and if you continue to have issues with this use case,

Cheers

comments: author: darianah
body: Thank you so much Rhys for your answer, it's very helpful.

If I do what you explained above for each task and I assign skills and capacity to each team members, portfolio will allocate the resources accordingly ?

i.e.

John - frontend developer - 40 weekly hours

Jack - frontend developer - 20 weekly hours

Sam - backend developer - 40 weekly hours

Eva - backend developer - 36 weekly hours

Task 1 - backend 4 hours

Task 2 - backend 8 hours

Task 3 - frontend 8 hours

Task 4 - frontend 4 hours

Task 5 - frontend 3 hours

With this information, will Portfolio allocate task to the correct resource, based on skills and will build the roadmap?

Thanks,

Dariana


author: Rhys Christian
body: Hey again [@darianah](/t5/user/viewprofilepage/user-id/1156599),

Yes. In the example you've provided Portfolio will build a roadmap and allocate tasks to the correct resource based on their skill. i.e only John and/or Jack will be assigned to Tasks 3, 4, 5 while only Sam and/or Eva will be assigned to Tasks 1, 2.

Note that Portfolio may assign multiple people to a task if that can consume capacity more efficiently. If you want to ensure that only 1 person gets assigned to a task make sure you set the maximum assignees per story in the plan config.

Hope this helps.  
Let me know if you have any issues.

Cheers,


Tags: advanced-roadmaps