Overview

This article will provide definitions and examples for key terms used throughout Parallax.

Schedule

The Schedule is the broadest way of thinking about hours - it's the baseline business hours that your People are scheduled to work. It is set for your Company as a whole under Settings > Customization, but you can override that schedule on an Person-by-Person basis under their profile under Settings > People.

Example:

• My Organization has a baseline of 8h per day each on Monday - Friday, for a total of 40h.
  • However, Person A has baseline 8h per day on Monday - Thursday, for total of 32h.

Billable Capacity

The Billable Capacity is the maximum hours a Person can spend on Billable activities, expressed as a percentage.  It is set by the Role in Settings > Roles, but can be overridden at the Person-by-Person level under each Person 's profile under Settings > People.

Example:

• The Role of QA Lead will have 4h of Internal Projects assigned weekly, leaving 36h for Billable work.  They have been set to 90% for Billable Capacity.
  • However, Person B - while still a QA Lead - is being reserved only for billable work.  As such, their Billable Capacity is set to 100%.

Availability

While you won't specifically see the term Availability mentioned within Settings, availability represents how many hours an Person has available for Allocation without reaching their Billable Capacity.  Since Availability needs to factor in Holidays and Time-Off, it is represented by the following equation:

(Schedule - Holidays - Time-Off) x Capacity = Availability

Note: This is the default setting, with Time Off and Holidays excluded.  For information on excluding/including Time Off and Holidays, check out this article.

Example:

• Person A is a QA Lead with the standard Schedule of 40h and Capacity of 90%.  During the week of New Years, we have one Standardized Holiday (8h) and the Person has requested no additional PTO.  Their Availability for that week will be:
  (40h - 8h) x 90% = 28.8h (7.2h per day)
• Person B is also a QA Lead with the same Schedule and Capacity, but took an additional day of PTO.  Person B will have the following availability:
  (40h - 8h - 8h) x 90% = 21.6h (also 7.2 per day)
• Person C is also a QA Lead but has a custom Capacity of 80%, and did not take any additional PTO.  Person C will have the following availability:
  (40h -8h) x 80% =  25.6 (6.4h per day)

Utilization

If Billable Capacity represents the maximum of an Role/Person's hours that can be billable, then Utilization represents how well you are executing against that - how much of the available time is being spent on billable work?  Target Utilization then represents how well you expect the Person to perform over time.  It is a goal or Target that allocations can be tracked against over time to see how much of their time is being spent on Billable work.  Essentially, if Capacity is what your People can do, Utilization is an average goal to hit over time.  Like Capacity, it is set by the Role in Settings > Roles, but can be overridden for an individual Person under Settings > People.

Example:

• The Role of QA Lead has a Billable Capacity of 90%, however, to account for additional Internal Projects that may come up, we've set a goal of 80% Utilization.  This allows us to schedule not just against the maximum that the Role can achieve, but instead against a goal we can track over time.
  • Person A is a QA Lead, but we want to keep them specifically dedicated on Billable work as additional internal projects come up, so their individual Utilization is 90%.