Find skill shortages with the Demand report

The Demand report compares the skills your projects need with the people who have them, level by level. It flags critical shortages, smaller shortages and surpluses, so you can decide where to hire, where to upskill and who can move to new work.

How it works

For every skill your projects need, the Demand report compares:

• demand: the positions your projects require, from Members Needed and Reqd. level in Team Builder
• capacity: the people in your organisation who have the skill, at each level

Each skill gets a status: critical where demand is far higher than the people you have, shortage where you are short but not critically, surplus where you have more people than your projects need, and balanced where supply meets demand.

Levels follow the bands of the skill scale: Expert in black, Intermediate in green and Beginner in yellow. See Rate your skills for what each level means.

The report works on cumulative numbers, because an expert can always do an intermediate's job. A shortage of experts cannot be covered by intermediates, but spare experts can cover part of a shortage at intermediate level.

Before you start

• Your role. You need to be an Owner or Admin.
• Projects with requirements. The report is built from skills-based teams in Team Builder. A skill counts when it has a Reqd. level or is marked as important with the star. See Build a project team in Team Builder.

Steps

Open the report

1. Open Demand. Go to Team/Org › Reports and click Demand under Skills in the menu on the left. The list is ordered by the most demanded skills.
2. Show more rows. The report shows 10 skills at a time. Choose up to 100 rows per page to see the full list.
3. Focus it. Use Select category to look at one skill category, Project status to choose which projects count, and Filter to limit capacity to departments, locations, tags or managers. Type in the search box to find a skill.

Team/Org › Reports › Skills › Demand.

4. Read the list. For each skill you see Total CAP (people who have it), Total DEM (positions your projects require), Cumulative GAP, Fill Rate and Status. Click a column name to sort by it.

Drill into a skill

5. Click a skill. The panel on the right shows four numbers: Headcount (available members), Demand (required positions), C. Gap (positions unfilled) and E. Cap, which the app describes as demand plus gap.
6. Read the breakdown by level. Under BREAKDOWN BY LEVEL, each level has:
   • D-CAP, direct capacity: people available at exactly this level
   • C-CAP, cumulative capacity: people at this level and above
   • D-DEM, direct demand: positions required at exactly this level
   • C-DEM, cumulative demand: positions required at this level and above
   • Gap: C-CAP minus C-DEM. Negative means a shortage, positive means a surplus
   • Status: Filled, Shortage, Critical, or Filled with a surplus
   • Hover a column name to see its definition.
7. Read the summary. SUMMARY gives the conclusion: a true surplus with how many people are free for new projects, a shortage with the final gap and a note on whether people at higher levels can help, or Supply meets demand at all cumulative levels. No action needed.
8. See the projects behind it. Active & Upcoming Projects lists the projects that create the demand and their status, such as planned, in progress or concluded.

For example, if a skill shows 7 experts against a demand of 11, you need at least four more experts, by hiring or by upskilling intermediates. Another skill might show a surplus of experts but a shortage at intermediate level.

Decide what to do

9. Hire where you are short of experts. No one below Expert can fill an expert position, so the gap stays until you hire or someone grows into it.
10. Upskill where intermediates can grow into the gap. Set goals for the people closest to the next level.
11. Redeploy where you have a surplus. Use Discover to find the people with the skill and time, and move them to projects that need them.

Where the data comes from

The report is built from your projects in Team Builder:

1. Create a skills-based team for each project.
2. In Skills Requirements, add the skills the project needs, the Reqd. level (Beginner, Intermediate or Expert) and the number of people in Members Needed.
3. Assign people to the project.

Team Builder shows, skill by skill, whether the requirement is filled (a green tick) or whether there is a gap, for example when the project needs an expert but the assigned person is a beginner. These numbers feed the Demand report. Setting Reqd. level to none leaves a skill out of the report, unless it is marked as important.

Projects synced from other systems

If you sync projects from Jira and Tempo or another system, add the skill requirements and the people to those projects in MuchSkills, even when the synced data is incomplete. That gives the report the detail it needs.

Tips

• Add requirements to every project. The more projects carry requirements, the truer the picture of demand.
• Include drafts to look ahead. Draft projects show demand you are about to have, before you commit.
• Check cumulative first. A shortage at one level may be covered by spare people one level up.
• Act on critical skills first. Sort by Status to see them at the top.

Troubleshooting