Strategic time planing: Breaking down EFFORT property

Strategic time planing: Breaking down EFFORT property

[Sven Bretfeld]

Hi everybody

My aim is to create workload plans distributing large projects over
several months. These are considered to distribute the
total effort of several projects into monthly, weekly and daily
planing. I cannot figure out how to do this.

Guess I have two projects, both with a deadline at the end of the year,
one project has a time estimate of 100 hours, the second 50 hours:

* Project 1
  :PROPERTIES:
  :EFFORT: 100:00
  :END:
  DEADLINE: <2023-12-24>

* Project 2
  :PROPERTIES:
  :EFFORT: 50:00
  :END:
  DEADLINE: <2023-12-24>

In order to get them done in time, I would assign a certain workload to
the three months Oct, Nov, Dec. Say, with an unequal distribution:

Project 1:
   Oct: 54 hours
   Nov: 16 hours
   Dec: 30 hours

Project 2:
   Oct: 10 hours
   Nov: 25 hours
   Dec: 15 hours

Now, it is the beginning of the first week of October. I make my weekly
planning and decide to spent 15 hours of this week with Project 1 and 5
with Project two. Today I would want to work on Project 1 for 4 hours, 3
on Project 2. I'm clocking in to Project 1, setting a org-clock-alarm to
remind me when it is time to switch to Project 2: 

* Project 1
  :PROPERTIES:
  :EFFORT_TOTAL: 100:00
  :EFFORT_THIS_MONTH: 54
  :EFFORT_THIS_WEEK: 15
  :EFFORT_TODAY: 4
  :CLOCK_MODELINE_TOTAL: today
  :END:
  DEADLINE: <2023-12-24>

* Project 2
  :PROPERTIES:
  :EFFORT_TOTAL: 50:00
  :EFFORT_THIS_MONTH: 10
  :EFFORT_THIS_WEEK: 5
  :EFFORT_TODAY: 3
  :CLOCK_MODELINE_TOTAL: today
  :END:
  DEADLINE: <2023-12-24>

Does anybody have an idea how to realize this scenario? Is there a
solution that I overlook? I'm not a elisp programmer and have just
started to use org-clock, but to me the solution seems to involve breaking down the
EFFORT property into several sub-properties as shown above. Of course,
each project has several sub-tasks feeding the EFFORT_TODAY property.

Thanks for help,

Sven

-- 
Sven Bretfeld
Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies
NTNU Trondheim

Re: Strategic time planing: Breaking down EFFORT property

[Ihor Radchenko]

Sven Bretfeld <sven.bretfeld@ntnu.no> writes:

> ...
> Now, it is the beginning of the first week of October. I make my weekly
> planning and decide to spent 15 hours of this week with Project 1 and 5
> with Project two. Today I would want to work on Project 1 for 4 hours, 3
> on Project 2. I'm clocking in to Project 1, setting a org-clock-alarm to
> remind me when it is time to switch to Project 2: 
>
> * Project 1
>   :PROPERTIES:
>   :EFFORT_TOTAL: 100:00
>   :EFFORT_THIS_MONTH: 54
>   :EFFORT_THIS_WEEK: 15
>   :EFFORT_TODAY: 4
>   :CLOCK_MODELINE_TOTAL: today
>   :END:
>   DEADLINE: <2023-12-24>
> ...
> Does anybody have an idea how to realize this scenario?

I am not sure what you mean by `org-clock-alarm'. We have
`org-clock-sound', which you need to customize for alarm to be played
when clocked time exceeds EFFORT.

For weekly/monthly/total, you can use clock tables to summarize the time
spend on different projects during the week/month/in total. See
https://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html

You can display additional property values in the clock table using
:properties attribute. That will allow seeing clocked time and your
estimates stored in EFFORT_* properties.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>

Re: Strategic time planing: Breaking down EFFORT property

[Sven Bretfeld]

Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:

> Sven Bretfeld <sven.bretfeld@ntnu.no> writes:
>
> I am not sure what you mean by `org-clock-alarm'. We have
> `org-clock-sound', which you need to customize for alarm to be played
> when clocked time exceeds EFFORT.

That's what I mean. 

> For weekly/monthly/total, you can use clock tables to summarize the time
> spend on different projects during the week/month/in total. See
> https://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html
>
> You can display additional property values in the clock table using
> :properties attribute. That will allow seeing clocked time and your
> estimates stored in EFFORT_* properties.

I think this is what I'm looking for. I considered clock tables to be
only for reviews, not planning. But I'm just playing with the feature
and seem to be able to do what I want.

Thank you

Sven

Re: Strategic time planing: Breaking down EFFORT property

[Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide]

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Sven Bretfeld <sven.bretfeld@ntnu.no> writes:

> Ihor Radchenko <yantar92@posteo.net> writes:
>> For weekly/monthly/total, you can use clock tables to summarize the time
>> spend on different projects during the week/month/in total. See
>> https://orgmode.org/manual/The-clock-table.html
>>
>> You can display additional property values in the clock table using
>> :properties attribute. That will allow seeing clocked time and your
>> estimates stored in EFFORT_* properties.
>
> I think this is what I'm looking for. I considered clock tables to be
> only for reviews, not planning. But I'm just playing with the feature
> and seem to be able to do what I want.

Can you share your setup once it is working as you want it?

What you are doing is much more complex (and useful) than what I used
EFFORT for and I would like to check whether I can adapt part of it.

I usually plan with a gantt chart in a plantuml code block:

#+begin_src plantuml :file THE-TITLE-gantt.png
@startgantt
title THE TITLE
saturday are closed
sunday are closed
2023-08-02 is closed
<style>
ganttDiagram {
  task {
    BackGroundColor GreenYellow
    LineColor Green
    unstarted {
      BackGroundColor Fuchsia
      LineColor FireBrick
    }
  }
}
</style>

' see https://plantuml.com/gantt-diagram
Project starts at 2023-09-18
[init] on {Arne:74%} lasts 2 days
[logging] on {Arne:74%} lasts 1 day
[config] on {Bera:80%} lasts 2 days
[scheduling] on {Arne:74%} lasts 1 day
[documentation] on {Arne:74%} lasts 1 day

[logging] starts at [init]'s end 
[config] starts at [init]'s end
[scheduling] starts at [logging]'s end
[documentation] starts at [scheduling]'s end

@endgantt
#+end_src

This doesn’t have the nice org-mode integration, though.

Best wishes,
Arne
-- 
Unpolitisch sein
heißt politisch sein,
ohne es zu merken.
draketo.de

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Re: Strategic time planing: Breaking down EFFORT property

[Ihor Radchenko]

"Dr. Arne Babenhauserheide" <arne_bab@web.de> writes:

> I usually plan with a gantt chart in a plantuml code block:

You might be interested in org-gantt package.
But gantt chart is a more strict approach compared to time allocation.

-- 
Ihor Radchenko // yantar92,
Org mode contributor,
Learn more about Org mode at <https://orgmode.org/>.
Support Org development at <https://liberapay.com/org-mode>,
or support my work at <https://liberapay.com/yantar92>