How Relation1 uses Tempo Capacity Planner for resource and capacity planning
Tempo Team
How Relation1 uses Tempo Capacity Planner for resource and capacity planning
As of December 2021, Relation1 was acquired by OSF Digital. All information in this case study was accurate as of time of posting on February 22nd, 2017.
Background
Relation1 is a consulting and IT service firm, operating in the digital and e-commerce fields. The company is composed of 50 professionals in Canada across three offices in Toronto, Montreal, and Quebec. They specialize in delivering added value professional services that combine expertise in data, marketing, and IT technologies.
Their main activities consist of:
Analysis and strategic planning for marketing data and e-commerce initiatives
Data-driven marketing and business intelligence
Customer journey personalization
Email marketing campaigns
Loyalty programs
We had the pleasure of having a chat with Etienne Borella, head of the project management office for their Montreal and Quebec offices.
Borella told us all about their implementation of Tempo Capacity Planner, after being introduced to it by one of our Platinum partners, Valiantys.
Challenges
Before implementing Tempo Capacity Planner within their organization, Relation1 used to rely on an Excel spreadsheet on a shared drive. According to Etienne, the biggest issues they faced were conflicting updates and unclear information due to the tedious effort of populating the relevant info.
The team was agile inspired, but operates with fixed price/fixed scope contracts. They use Scrum / Kanban JIRA tools for internal projects and operations management and this would all have to be taken into account when looking for a tool that could solve their information issues but still fit in with their workstyle.
Enter Capacity Planner.
Solutions
When we asked Etienne what problems Tempo Capacity Planner solves for them, Borella simply said:
“Team planning, resource planning, and capacity planning”.
Borella emphasized that the most useful features, and the ones the team used the most, were the team members timeline and team capacity report.
Borella elaborated: “Since everybody (with the proper permission) can update the plan simultaneously, it saves a lot of time and frustration. We have an efficient 30-minute weekly meeting where we address allocation conflicts with all project managers.
“Since plans are linked to JIRA tasks and projects, everybody can immediately view what they are planned to do, and who planned that work."
Borella added: “Previously, we used to do our planning in Microsoft Excel, and information was less precise. Tempo Planner has given us a very useful visual representation with the timeline view that makes it easy to quickly see who is planned to work on what.”
Results
What about the benefits? How has life been after the implementation of Capacity Planner?
Borella said: “Tempo Planner has helped us in fostering good planification practices.“
What about the staff members? When we asked Borella how his team members have taken to the implementation of Tempo Planner, he said:
“Our team members enjoy the clarity of information. Especially the integration with JIRA and the visual representation that Tempo Planner offers.”
“In a fast paced environment, with multiple simultaneous projects and operations, and numerous stakeholders across various offices, Tempo Planner has proved vital for team members who need to view resource allocation and plan time, on an almost daily basis.”
Relation1 has also adopted Timesheets by Tempo, and are using accounts and teams, along with the Tempo API for syncing JIRA time spent on projects with their accounting system (MS Dynamics NAV) for their business needs.