FAQ

Milestones are specific progress points in the project timeline visible in the pipeline. They add significant value to resource scheduling and help project managers determine where their teams stand in terms of project progress. In Epicflow, you get a unified view of your multiple projects’ milestones on a single dashboard.

Full-time equivalent (FTE) is a unit that indicates the workload of employee in a way that makes workloads or class loads comparable across various contexts. An FTE of 1.0 is equivalent to a full-time worker, while an FTE of 0.5 signals half of a full work.

Capacity is the maximum amount of work that an employee is capable of completing in a given period. In Epicflow Capacity is measured in FTE.

This is the percent index of employee’s capacity in certain group to which he\she does belong.

Is a sum of all employees’ capacity multiplied on their availability in the group

Is a sum of all groups’ capacity which are a part of Multigroup.

Graphs is the essential part of the Epicflow system that provides project manager with the analytic, based on the data retrieved from Jira or MS Project. Currently, Epicflow has four types of graphs:

• Historical load graph for presenting group performance, capacity, load, and output over time.
• Future load graph for helping management take control of resource planning and predict the impact of additional projects on the resource load.
• Burnup chart for indicating how much work has been completed by the teams, and the total amount of work. Remaining weeks graph shows the amount of work left for each resource group
  

Presents list of prioritized tasks. Must be used as a guideline of task accomplishments sequence by each engineer of your team. In that way it helps to achieve the most optimal projects and tasks flow.

Centralized view of all ongoing and inactive projects in the system and their milestones on timeline. Main features are projects prioritization, visualization of unfeasible planning, future load control and prediction of impacts on new changes of projects flow conditions.

Used to manage and visualize resources’ capacity, availability, future load, group\suppergroup\users creation\editing\deletion and mapping external resources with internal one.

It’s Burnup graph view mode that helps project managers determine how much of their planned money was budgeted, scheduled, and burned.

Allows you to see your team’s maximum amount of output that can be produced. In the Epicflow system, it is measured in man hours per hour. It shows you the capacity for your groups or resources and designed to help project managers see what is the actual capacity of your employees in comparison to their load and output.

Multigroup is a type of group which allows you to group groups in one instance. Such approach allows you to use it later for the compound groups analysis and control.

Budget task is a task type which defines total amount of man-hours allotted for the task(s), summary or project fulfillment.

It’s a chain of planned activities with the path to logical end points or to the end of the project.

Critical path is a chain of tasks, which can’t be accomplished in time. This occurs if there is not enough time left, even is all resources will give 100% of their capacity.

We measure what’s happening at the project level. The priority system takes care that the tasks in the critical path get the highest priority.You can imagine that you have a lot of different paths and one of them is in a critical situation at the moment, so it gets a specific number. This number tells you what the situation is. If the number of a critical path is 100, it means you don’t have any extra time left yet, so you can’t afford any delay. But if the number is 80, it means you have 20% of buffer time compared to the delivery date. On the other hand, if the number is 107, then we normally say you’ll be seven days late no matter how hard you work. The critical path already has a seven-day delay. This is how we work. Because we are fully aware that knowing the status of the project is extremely important for everybody.

To reset a password, at login screen, you need to select “Forgot Password” option. As next step an email of particular user must be specified.
In case if resource’s email is not available, communicate with Functional Application Manager with such request to proceed. When an e-mail address will be changed there will be a letter sent for password restore.

If you have a multi-project environment, let the priority calculation decide in which order a resource has to work. Epicflow’s solution for multi-project management will set these priorities for you and give the best possible sequence in the Task List. In our priority list, we also give a number which is called the pressure. If the pressure is high, then be careful in changing the sequence. But if the pressure is low, it means that you still have buffer time and you can switch it around a little bit. The number of the priority is not absolute, it’s relative, and you can play with it. But it’s better to keep with the priority mechanism.

Yes. That can be done and for that you need to define it in MS Project.Please note, that similar to MS Project you cannot have one resource assigned twice with the same group to one task. So if you have one tasks and two engineers from the group “Engineering” are required, you would need to have specified two different engineers

It’s a special group called “Un-Compressible Lead Time”, you can add it as a resource in case of ordering time.

In case if you have some tasks which must be performed by external resources and you would like to have automatic indication of the progress by the Epicflow system. Please note that Epicflow will automatically decrease estimation for the tasks assigned on UCLT group each day by 1 FTE.

Instrument for on time project accomplishment is a Project’s Priority. Always keep it below 99%. In case if you have it higher than 100% you need manage occurred situation with all Project Management arsenal you are possessing such as resource reallocation, rescheduling, other projects replanning etc.

Keep team’s load on 90% and control to not have them overloaded with the help of Future Load graph

For each situation answer for this question could be different. It depends on many parameters such resource capacity, load, financial information etc. Nevertheless you always need to control such parameters for all your resources to have optimal Project flow.

Sequence of the tasks with the highest priority will create the highest pressure. That’s why each engineer should perform task with the highest priority from his(her) task list.

MUST HAVE: Adding resources or resource groups to tasks with a work estimation. (this the only way to calculate load) SHOULD HAVE: every task or their summary task should have a successor/predecessor. (this is required to calculate the right task priority.)

For now, you can create Tasks in MS Project and upload it to Epicflow or create internal project in Epicflow directly.

Go to the Task list section/Choose resource for specific task/Click right button on the resource/Change Resource for this task(assign to the resource or multiple groups)

1. Web application, you can create a user and send an invitation to log in the system. After that user can filter the tasks assigned to him/ assigned by the project/ by the group. 2. Mobile Application, where the user can see only Tasks which assigned to him specifically and upload the information about the remaining/total hours which will be synchronized on the spot with Epicflow and MS Project.

The approach behind Epicflow provides the list of the tasks to the resource by priority. That is why a system will always calculate the most important tasks and rank them by priority taking into account pressure for all projects at once. So this way user will always have an up-to-date list of task’s sequences and won’t bothered by the latest tasks.

1. You can assign Resource group on the task, then the load/priority will be calculated by the group availability. 2. Another way, you can create the Task in MS projects with 2 specific resources assigned(multiple assignment), the load/priority will be calculated by the person. Epicflow will show that in Task list and they will upload Remaining hours separately.

Epicflow calculates and displaces Resource overload\underload according to the Resource Capacity+amount of assigned tasks according to the calendar. This info is represented in the Future Load Graph by resource/by group/total.

Its dependence on your process, the task can be estimated by PM/by team/by resource, but assigned resource should upload the information about the remaining/total hours.

There are dependencies in MS Project between tasks such as predecessor, successor etc., which Epicflow imports and displaces accordingly.

Yes, you can create these 2 Resource groups in the Resource management section and divide their availability.

To be able to delete a group, you need to free it from all assignments of tasks.

Capacity is the maximum amount of work that an employee is capable of completing in a given period. In Epicflow Capacity is measured in FTE. Group Capacity Is a sum of all employees’ capacity multiplied on their availability in the group

Each resource can be assigned to multiple groups at the same time. In result such attachment of the resource to the specific group is defined by resource assignee to the group. Which is an additional separation level of resource by groups to which it’s attached.

Guaranteed% means the minimum mandatory level of involvement of the resource in the group’s tasks.

Maximum% indicates the degree of involvement of the resource in the group’s tasks.

Current% means the average value of the involvement of the resource in the group’s tasks given its involvement in other groups.

If you need a Teamplate, please contact sales or support departments.

The answer to your question is “Yes.” Removing a project from the environment does not affect the original data source in any way. In the future, you will simply need to re-add the project to the import page manually.

To avoid such situation, you need to specify Email Address for the newly created resource in Resource Pool. That will help Epicflow later, in case of resource’s name change, to use Email Address as identifier and link automatically such resource with the previously uploaded one in Epicflow.

If the the add-in is installed, but hidden, go to menu File->Options-> Add-ins.