Who this is for: All users
The activity burden heatmap shows how much time people spend away from their normal work because of change activities, such as training, meetings and communications. Use it to spot groups that are overloaded before a go-live.
Open the report
- Click Reports in the left menu.
- Choose Activity burden.
Set up and generate the heatmap
- Org chart tier: pick the level of your org chart to show as rows.
- Time scale: weekly is the default. You can switch to monthly or quarterly.
- Start date and End date: by default, today to one year from today.
- Filter: narrow the report to particular initiatives. With nothing chosen, it includes them all.
- Filter by audience: pick the groups you want to see.
- Click Generate report.
ChangePlan remembers your time scale and date range for next time.
Read the heatmap
- Rows are groups from your org chart. Columns are time periods.
- Cell colours show how much time is spent away from normal work, using your organisation’s thresholds. The legend shows the bands.
- Click a cell to see the activities behind it, with their status, initiative, dates, type, time away from normal work and audience. You can export this list.
- Sort the rows by clicking a column heading.
How it’s calculated
For each activity, ChangePlan multiplies the time per person by the number of people involved. If an activity runs across several periods, the time is shared out by the number of days in each.
Example: an activity for 10 people takes 60 minutes each, so 600 minutes in total. It runs for 48 days: 20 in January and 28 in February. January gets 250 minutes and February gets 350.
Individuals don’t appear as their own rows. Their time counts towards their org chart group, or towards a custom group if the activity is set up that way.
Options
Use Options to change what the heatmap shows:
- Average per person: show the average hours per person instead of total hours.
- Display hour count in cells: show the hours in each cell.
- Custom groups: show your custom groups as rows.
- Show completed activities: include activities that are already finished.
- Show only groups with activities: hide groups with nothing assigned.
Export the heatmap
Click the Export icon and choose:
- PNG: a picture of the heatmap, showing the date range and time scale.
- XLS: the full underlying data for your date range and filters.
If nothing shows
If you see “No activity burden matches these filters”, widen or clear your filters, then generate the report again.
Tips
- Use Average per person for a fair comparison between large and small groups.
- Look at this report alongside the change impact heatmap to see both what is changing and how much time it takes.
- To get accurate results, make sure each activity has its time per person filled in. See Plan activities and view the timeline.
- To see the burden from one initiative only, open the initiative and choose Reports in its menu.
- Start with org chart level 2 for a useful spread, then expand groups or roll up.
- If a group you expect is missing, turn off Show only groups with activities.
- If the hours look odd, check the time scale: the same activity time is shared out differently across weeks, months and quarters.
Still stuck?
Email support@changeplan.co with a screenshot of what you see, and we’ll help.