Team-Centric Workforce Planning Guide

For an introduction to workforce planning, please see Team-Centric Workforce Planning

Navigation: Team-Centric Workforce Planning

At TeamForm, we encourage an iterative approach to embedding and developing a team-centric workforce planning capability. Starting small within the organisation to really help build and embed the foundational muscles required to successfully plan at the scale of 100s of teams and 1000s of people.

Unlocking first team-centric workforce planning value with TeamForm

Before we can get started, there is a pre-requisite that you already have a single source of truth of your current workforce, work and delivery team structures made in visible in Team Directory. This single source of truth visibility consists of completing all the activities highlighted in the mandatory 2 phased approach outlined in the https://teamform.atlassian.net/l/cp/mvmBzzKq.

NOTE: If you have a need of a secondary supply structure, please make sure this has been established in Directory prior to continuing with team-centric workforce planning.

Piloting scope

Based on our experiences with various customers, we have found that starting small with a subset of teams makes it a lot easier to design, test and iterate on the intended workforce planning process than to try to onboard everyone. We recommend targeting 1-2 cross functional Business Units to start is a good size as it allows effective testing of the designed process, lower change management effort and easier to get targeted feedback on improvement areas.

Planning Cadence

Set up the planning cadence so that the raising of capacity needs can be done throughout the quarter. This is otherwise known as continuous planning where this planning cycle has limited formalised alignment with company cadences

Value achieved when completed

Ability to regularly review whether delivery teams and capabilities are aligned to priority work
A way to coordinate resourcing between delivery teams and providers of capability
When resource needs are raised and assessed, it can be done with linkage to work priorities to ensure the right capability has been allocated to the right delivery teams at the right time
Ability to understand high level cost estimates of each delivery team
Ability to allow leaders to plan against a point in time reference point otherwise known as baseline

Activities you will need to complete in order to achieve the values articulated above

How to set up TeamForm

Category	TeamForm Business Design Decisions and Associated Configuration Activities
People Data	Business design decisions: What data do resourcing managers need to gain holistic visibility of available resources they have? (eg: vacancies, long service leave, etc) What is the end to end process resourcing managers should follow to raise the identified resourcing gaps to the HR recruitment team? At TeamForm, we recommend the following additional data is brought into the platform from HRIS system: Employee leave/holiday information Vacancies Secondments Configuration step(s): https://teamform.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OS/pages/2751922287/As+an+Admin+I+d+like+to+request+a+data+import+from+TeamForm
Financials	Business design decisions: Is your organisation comfortable with the use of a blended rate card to give a high level estimation of what teams are costing? Will Finance have resistance towards this high level costing? Are you clear on the intent and purpose on the use of the blended rate card? If your organisation is only ready to apply the use of actual costing of people then a blended rate card is not recommended to be brought in as it will cause confusion on what the numbers present vs what Finance provides them. Configuration step(s): Follow the steps articulated in How to load in daily rate cards to bring your blended rate card into TeamForm
Baseline Refresh	Define when you want to refresh the baseline reference point. At this stage we recommend you either do it at the start of every month or whenever the team is about head into a form of a planning cycle. Configuration step(s): Click here to read more on how to refresh the baseline.
Demand Requests and Approval Workflow	Business design decisions: Which delivery team types are allowed to raise and submit requests? Which supply team types are allowed to review and approve requests? What cadences and/or processes that will enable delivery team leads and supply leads to discuss contested resources and/or work priorities? Are there any process guardrails that need to be put in place before demand team leads can go in and raise a demand request? Are there any process guardrails and/or data that is required by the supply team lead to help inform them of their resource allocation decisions? (eg skillsets, cost centre IDs, etc) How will delivery team leads be able to identify the right supply team to raise their capability request against? Configuration step(s): Org Structure Config Guide for Delivery Teams - Use this doc to help you configure the agreed delivery team types that can raise request Org Structure Config Guide for Supply Teams - Use this doc to help you configure the agreed supply team types that can approve request
Automated Notifications	Business Design Decisions: What are the different types of notifications you would like users to receive automatically and at what frequency? What are the different business rules you would like to put in place to trigger email notifications? Who will receive the notifications? Configuration step(s): Currently this functionality is not available for self-service. If you have a need to set up automated notifications, please contact your TeamForm Consultant.

How TeamForm will be used by users during workforce planning once configured as outlined in the table above

Delivery team leads uses Planner to lodge all capacity requests throughout the quarter
Supply team leads uses Planner to review and approve all capacity requests and then uses Team Builder to assess allocation of team members against requests
Team Builder is also used to track discrepancy between agreed FTE vs allocated FTE

Workflow example of how the workforce planning process will run:

Next maturity phase to enhance team-centric workforce planning with TeamForm

How do you know you’re ready for this phase:

Delivery and supply leaders are comfortable with the use of Planner and Team Builder to triage and manage capacity requests
The blended rate is understood by all participating users on how to interpret the data and can use it to provide a high level estimate of team cost
A version of continuous planning has been piloted end to end with identified blockers removed and non-negotiable improvement areas implemented

Participation Scope

Through the initial rollout of the pilot you should already know which part of the workforce planning process works and areas of improvement required to make it work for your organisation. Therefore with the refinements put in place, by now you should be able to onboard all cross functional functional teams to take part in the workforce planning process OR 60% of the organisation.

Planning cadence

Both continuous planning and quarterly planning anchored to the organisation’s planning cadence i.e we start to introduce a set period approval workflow process

Value achieved when completed

A clear workforce planning process is established with clear roles and sequenced activities defined to help establish a workforce plan that will achieve business objectives in the upcoming 3-4 quarters
A clear tooling ecosystem established to help define the flow of data between platforms and systems so that workforce insights can be extrapolated holistically
Cross functional and non-cross functional teams have been enabled to workforce plan following a single process within TeamForm
High level estimation of team financial costs are provided to users
80% of planning activities are done in alignment to the organisation’s planning cycle with continued support and process in place for in quarter / continuous planning to capture ad hoc movements
Ability to allow leaders to plan for multiple time periods otherwise known as planning periods

Area	Activity
Baseline Refresh	Business design decisions: Define the agreed frequency at which you want to refresh the baseline which is generally aligned to the company’s planning cycle i.e. quarterly At TeamForm, we recommend you to agree on 2 sets of baseline refresh dates: Once at the end of quarter and Once after the completion of all planning cycle activities Configuration Step(s): Refresh the baseline on the agreed dates
Planning Period and Forecast	Business design decisions: Is your organisation comfortable with the concept of periodic planning such as quarterly planning? What constraints or guardrails are you putting in place for users to follow in between the planning periods? For example do you allow leaders to ask for additional capacity throughout the quarter and if so, when can they ask for this and what approval process do they need to go through with Finance and HR? At what point / date should you cutover from one planning period to the next? How far in advance do you want delivery leads to provide an indication of how long they will need their raised capacity for? At TeamForm, we recommend establishing planning periods for the next 4 quarters. Configuration Step(s): https://teamform.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/OS/pages/2925789430/What+is+a+allocation+project+planning+period#How-to-create-and-configure-a-planning-period-(aka-allocation-project) - Use this doc to hep you create the agreed additional planning periods in TeamForm On the agreed date transition from current planning period to the next planning period in alignment with the organisation’s start of planning cycle
Financials	Where possible, budgets or financial constraints are brought into the system
Delivery request requirements	Business Design Decisions: What specific requirements and/or skillsets do you mandate delivery leads to input when requesting for capacity? Configuration step(s): How to create a new tag type - Use this doc to help you create any new tag types that are required to support the workflow process How to create tag values - Use this doc to help you create any new tag values How to modify tag type configurations - Use this doc to help you configure tags to become a requirement data input in Planner
Automated Notifications	Business Design Decisions: What are the additional notifications you would like users to receive automatically and at what frequency? What are the different business rules you would like to put in place to trigger email notifications? Who will receive the notifications? Configuration step(s): Currently this functionality is not available for self-service. If you have a need to set up automated notifications, please contact your TeamForm Consultant.
Workforce Planning Process	Business design decisions: Have you identified the accountable owner(s) of the overall workforce planning process to help drive endorsement and roll out the planning cycle activities? Have you designed and embedded the end to end workforce planning process with guardrails established on what people need to follow across different planning scenarios including but not limited to the following: Deleting or creating a new team Raising for requisitions or secondments Chargeback models Are you clear on the roles and responsibilities of who’s to do what across each step of the process and who is involved throughout the process such as Finance and HR?
Tooling Ecosystem	Business design decisions: What is the process on how all the different platforms such as work, finance, people, team and reporting tools will come together to support the end to end workforce planning cycle? How will the different tooling data come together so that holistic data insights can be extrapolated and reported? What is your tooling integration strategy? Configuration Step(s): Socialise your tooling landscape roadmap and scope with your TeamForm Consultant so that further analysis and integration steps can be established with Customer Success Engineers on how to enable the strategy

Workflow example of how the workforce planning process will run:

Final team-centric workforce planning value unlock with TeamForm

How do you know you’re ready for this phase:

The end to end workforce planning process, roles and responsibilities, sequenced activities and tooling landscape are understood by all participating employees
Participating users are proficient in using Planner, Team Builder and Forecast to complete workforce planning activities including knowing when to use what module
Cross functional and non cross functional teams are clear of how demands between different teams will be raised and managed within or outside of TeamForm
The relationship between the budget constraints and blended rates of team costs in TeamForm and how it plays to the impacts of the actual costing of the workforce is well understood by team leaders and Finance

Participation Scope

Whole of organisation participating in process (usually the people in scope for cross-functional teaming structures)

Planning Cadence

Removal of continuous planning as all planning activities are executed to the enterprise cadenced planning cycle

Value achieved when completed

A single workforce planning process is followed and adopted by the whole organisation (especially the people in scope for cross-functional teaming structures with the need to leverage on non cross functional teams)
Ability to execute an enterprise cadenced planning without the need of in quarter / continuous planning, allowing the organisation to achieve true persistent teams
A planning process that can drive multi year workforce structure decisions based on long-term enterprise objectives, existing team insights on capability, capacity and principles alignment

Area	Activity
Forecast	Multi year Forecast enabled with Principles insights leveraged to drive decision making Confidence indicator enabled for leaders to provide an early indication of how confident they are against forecasted numbers
Demand Requests and Approval Workflow	Planner request and approval flow enabled and aligned to the different stages of the enterprise’s planning cycle
Reports	Scheduled data export or API used for downstream reporting and analytics of data from various tools
Workforce Modelling	Where required, separate workspace granted to allow future workforce modelling in Planner

Workflow example of how the workforce planning process will run:

Optional: Additional Planner set up for better user experience

Use the table below to help you understand what other features can be done with your Planner! Remember they are optional and should only be brought into the platform when your organisation is ready for it or sees value in it.

	Benefit(s) of enabling the functionality
Limit users from being able to view, action requests on their own teams only	While restricting certain people to have views of their own team, this limits transparency and collaboration between leaders to drive effective conversations. Instead we recommend the ‘trust but verify’ model in using the History functionality in TeamForm to trace who has performed what actions within teams if data looks inaccurate rather than introducing viewing and actioning restrictions as it will introduce more admin effort to maintain the access list and for someone to jump in and help if for example is going on leave.
Automated notifications	Automated notifications and/or dedicated email distribution lists can be provided to you so that you can easily send customised notifications specific group of users. Examples of this may be reminding them to update allocation so that workforce insights can be extrapolated or to review demand requests so that any contentious resource constraints can be discussed and resolved at a Dependency Marketplace. This requires the specific notification content to be provided to TeamForm and the updated business logic to who should receive the notification, how and when.
Ways of working principles	Giving TeamForm all your team archetypes from the start will allow you to: Put people into the right team types that resonate with them Allow users to easily create new teams of the specified team types in TeamForm

Additional resources:

Use the playbook below to give you step by step guidance on how to roll out Planner, Team Builder and Forecast modules into your organisation as you embark on each phased journey of unlocking workforce planning journey with TeamForm.