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When you plan your project, especially in the beginning, you might only have a very high-level planning (e.g. time budgets on project or component level), and with the time, you can go more into details (tasks, sub-tasks). So you need to start planning with very rough numbers, but of course with the time, you want to benefit from being able to plan more in detail. It also might happen that some people in general prefer to plan top-down and others want to plan bottom-up:
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| Time Budget / Planning Values | Description | Remarks |
|---|---|---|
| generic | plan-values directly entered on this level, you set this value | possible for components and project; on the task level, this is simply the JIRA work estimate |
| calculated | time is retrieved from lower levels, you see this value, but can't set it | this is a value calculated by ictime from available data on the next-lower level ; according to the logic explained below |
According to the planning approach explained above, we apply a specific logic to calculate and show plan vaues on every level. Have a look at the following example:
| Level | Generic | Calculated | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Task A1-01 | 5h | We have made a work estimate of 5h. | |
| Task A1-02 | 10h | We have made a work estimate of 10h. | |
| Component A1 | 30h | = 15h | We have planned 30h for component A1, and we have a calculated plan value for this component of 15h from task level. Obviously, the generic value is to high or we are still missing work estoimates for tasks of this component. |
| Component A2 | 20h | We have planned 30h for component A2. No work estimates for tasks yet, so no calculated value. | |
| Component A3 | 10h | We have planned 10h for component A3. No work estimates for tasks yet, so no calculated value. | |
| Projekt A | 100h | = 60h | We have planned 100h on project level. We have a calculated value of 60h from component level. So still some planning to do on lower levels ... |
| Tip |
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You remember, we wanted to plan top-down and bottom up at the same time. The example above shows a planning situation where we are still missing some detailed planning. As we are aware of that, we still have set plan values directly on component level, and we also still maintain a generic value on project level. This way we have decided that we want to use |
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the (rough) component values for calculating the project plan and are not ready yet to replace them by calculated values from task level. All this gets transparent as we can see that generic and calculated values are present and still don't fit very well. |
Now have a look at the same project in a later planning stage:
| Level | Generic | Calculated | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|
| Task A1-01 | 5h | We have made a work estimate of 5h. | |
| Task A1-02 | 10h | We have made a work estimate of 10h. | |
| Task A1-03 | 10h | We have added this task and have made a work estimate of 10h. | |
| Component A1 |
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| = 25h | We have deleted the generic value for component A1, as we have decided that the detailed planning for tasks of this component is ready now. So we only have a calculated plan value for this component of 25h from task level (doing the detailed plan on task level, we also realised that 30h was to much). | ||
| Task A2-01 | 10h | ||
| Task A2-02 | 25h | ||
| Component A2 | =35h | We have deleted the generic value for component A2, as we have decided that the detailed planning for tasks of this component is ready now. So we only have a calculated plan value for this component of 25h from task level (doing the detailed plan on task level, we also realised that 20h was not enough). | |
| Component A3 | 10h | We have planned 10h for component A3. No work estimates for tasks yet, so still no calculated value. | |
| Projekt A | = 70h | We have deleted the generic value on project level, as we think that planning for components is now okay and reflects the overall time budget we will need. So we have a calculated value of 70h from component level, and big parts of that planning value is a result of work estimates on task level. |
Even though it might be difficult to understand in the beginning, it is very simple: By setting a generic plan value on component level, you decide that this value should be used for calculating the results for the project (top-down approach, not very detailed). By not setting it, you decide that the calculated result for the component (= work estimates for all task/sub-tasks of the component) should be used for calculating the project time budget (bottom-up approach, detailed).
If you don't use components, XXX
The derived budget is always displayed (and calculated) only between exactly two levels, and it considers derived time budgets as well as generic time budgets. If there is a generic time budget, this is always taken. If not, the derived one is taken.
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