Improving Transparency with Tableau
Business Solutions & Support (BSS) recently completed an iACTion plan to "develop and deploy reporting tools and metrics providing OBFS stakeholders visibility regarding Business Solutions & Support capacity and project effort allocation over a five year horizon".
BSS developed the OBFS BSS High-Level Capacity Forecast report using Tableau to provide OBFS stakeholders visibility regarding their capacity and projected project effort allocation over a five year horizon. This tool should make project planning that requires BSS services easier for OBFS team members.
The Finance Subcommittee (FSC), a subset of the Information Technology Priorities Committee (ITPC), has been using the excel version of this report for the past 5 years to set the priority of projects and check accuracy.
How to use the OBFS BSS High-Level Capacity Forecast
Here are a few tips to get you started with using the tool.
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If you click the small icon that looks like a highlighter when hovering over the legend, this will allow for clicking to isolate color to only to the project you have selected.
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Double clicking in the graph will allow you to zoom in on a certain area.
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The slider bar on the top right of the graph will allow you to change the date range.
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Hovering over a project will display a tooltip that will give project name, month of the calculation, and the FTEs for that month.
OBFS units can use the OBFS BSS High-Level Capacity Forecast to see what projects BSS is already working on, so users have a better expectation of when new projects might be able to start. REMEMBER: Project priority is set by the FSC, so it is possible that a new project could be made a higher priority than something already scheduled on the Forecast.
Have more questions on how to use the OBFS BSS High-Level Capacity Forecast? Contact Brad Burwell at bburwel@uillinois.edu.
