Getting started with Kelloo
CHAPTER 1
Learn Kelloo basics
Getting started with Kelloo is easy, in this chapter you will learn about the fundamental components of Kelloo – resources, work, capacity and more.
Welcome to Kelloo!
Kelloo is a visual resource planning tool that empowers teams to plan, schedule and manage their resources, work and projects. It helps you get the right people onto the right projects, understand if you have enough resources to get your projects done or if you need to hire more people or reorganize schedules.
Some folks like to organize their projects using agile principles while others use more traditional ways to plan and schedule. We have both covered.
This is a quick overview of the things you need to know when you are first starting with Kelloo.
In this guide we use the terminology projects to keep things simple. But you can use Kelloo to plan and schedule projects, products, agile sprints, service engagements or anything else. You can also customize the terminology and structure in Kelloo to match the language and workflow your team uses.
Section Overview
In this section you will learn:
- Planner introduction
- Planner – project view, resource view, sprint view and priority view
- Using the resource status panel to view utilization
Planner introduction
The planner in Kelloo is where you will spend most of your time. It is a master schedule of all your resources, work and projects and shows when things are happening.
Some organizations have one person who does all the planning while others have multiple people who plan resources. You can work both ways in Kelloo.
Typical tasks you will perform in the resource plan are:
- Create and assign work to resources.
- Reschedule and re-plan work.
- Keep tabs on utilization to spot resources with too much work or free time.
- Set the priority of work.
- Evaluate how different work schedules and resource hiring plans can solve resource constraints.
Project view
There are four views of the planner and project view is a good place to start.
If you don't run projects but perhaps plan things like products or initiatives then you can configure the terminology in Kelloo to match your language and workflow. So in your account the project view could become product view for example.
Project view organizes all your work within projects. Look on the left of the screenshot below, we can see our major project headings and the work contained within them.
The bars on the right show when the work is happening. And in case you run agile projects – note how some of our work is split into sprints.
Resource view
No surprise here – resource view organizes your work by resource. Resources are organized within their role (i.e. developer, project manager etc).
The color coding indicates periods of over and under utilization. Red = bad and green = good.
If you have a problem viewing the color coding in the planner, check out the options to fine tune the level of detail, color coding etc. used in the planner.
Sprint view
If you manage sprints then take a look at sprint view. With sprint view, your work can be organized into sprints and for each sprint you can see the sprint period, when the sprint work is currently planned for and the remaining capacity of the sprint.
Priority view
On first impression, priority view looks a whole lot like project view. But notice the red dotted line running across the planner. That is a clue something different is going on in here.
- Anything below the dotted cut off line is excluded from the resource plan’s capacity and utilization calculations. So if you want to model putting a project on hold and see the effect on your resources just drag it below the line. Learn more here.
- The work in priority view is also organized into priority sequence. The highest priority work is at the top and the lowest at the bottom.
Utilization warnings
Notice how some of the planner bars have a red top border. This indicates periods when the resource assigned to the work is over allocated.
While some periods do not have a red border. You’ve guessed it – these are the periods the resource is not over allocated. Red bar = problem to investigate.
Resource utilization
Open the resource status panel to check on your resources utilization and availability.
Utilization is a metric that indicates how much of a resource’s time is available or if they are allocated too much work. Keeping tabs on utilization is key to ensure your people do not get overloaded.
