Macro Planning Road Map

Question

I would like to have your opinion on an issue I am facing in project management.

I would like to create a Roadmap 2020 for my team, a kind of macro planning.

A concrete example, I have a list of projects A, B, C, D, let's take the case of project A,

1. it should start in January and end in March,
2. the workload is 100 man-days.

How can I calculate the number of resources needed to carry it out ?(and so on for my B,C and D project).

Is it possible to do this using MS project (Define a Macro planning)? when I read the forums, people seem to use some kind of capacity planner in Excel.

In general, how do you manage macro planning from one year to the next?

thanks.

Answer 1

You need to add such entities as roles if there are more then 1 resource type (i.e. qa and dev) and add to each task/project an appropriate estimates for each role. Such plan will be more accurate then operating with one generic resource role.

And, yes, you can make such plan in microsoft project or any other tool that allows you to create a Gant chart (wbs + network diagram) and allocate resources.

Answer 2

Try to make a network diagram for project A with critical path on it. Then you should add work durations on a diagram. If the due date is over your schedule limitations, you should allocate more resources for this work - and you could calculate this way the required amount of resources for the whole project. The other option is to have a look at Agile planning with sprints and sprint velocity (could be clear after several iterations). Dividing the whole backlog on your team's velocity you could get the due date. And if it is not satisfy you, you could add resources and then get to the desired due date on schedule.