Balancing a workload based on commitments to projects
AssigneeInternational Business Machines Corporation
InventorsPaul R. Bastide, Matthew E. Broomhall, Robert E. Loredo, Dale M. Schultz, Shunguo Yan
Life of this patent
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Abstract
Balancing a workload based on commitments to projects includes monitoring messages in a collaboration system, the messages representing correspondences between users of the collaboration system, selecting a number of the users associated with the collaboration system to form a group of users, retrieving the messages from each of the users in the group of users, analyzing data associated with the messages to determine which of the messages relate to at least one project, and executing, based on a threshold, at least one action to optimize a workload for at least one user in the group of users for the at least one project.
Claims20
A system for balancing a workload based on commitments to projects, the system comprising:
- a processor;
- memory in communication with the processor;
- and
- a network interface to interface the processor with a computer network;
- the processor to implement all of:
- a monitoring engine to monitor messages in a collaboration system, the messages representing correspondences between users of the collaboration system, each message being directed to and associated with a specific one of the users;
- an analyzing engine to analyze data associated with the messages in the collaboration system, the analyzing engine to determine which of the messages relate to a specific project;
- a commitment determining engine to determine a commitment for each user in a group of users associated with the specific project, the commitment for each user measuring that user's commitment to a plurality of different projects including the specific project;
- and
- an executing engine to redirect and reassign a message related to the specific project in the collaboration system from a first user associated with the message to a different user, wherein the message is redirected and reassigned from the first user, with which the message was originally associated, to the different user based on relative commitments of the users in the group of users associated with the specific project to rebalance workloads among the users, the different user having a lesser commitment than the first user as determined by the commitment determining engine.
A computer program product for balancing a workload based on commitments to projects, the computer program product comprising:
- a processor;
- memory in communication with the processor;
- and
- as part of the memory in communication with the processor, a non-transitory computer readable storage medium, said computer readable storage medium comprising computer readable program code embodied therewith, said computer readable program code comprising program instructions that, when executed, causes the processor to:
- retrieve messages from each of a number of users in a group of users associated with a specific project;
- analyze data associated with the messages to determine which of the messages relate to the project;
- determine a relative workload for each of the users in the group;
- and
- execute, based on relative workloads, at least one action to optimize a workload for at least one user in the group of users for the project, including reassigning a message related to the project from a first user to a second user from the group of users associated with the specific project;
- wherein, according to the instructions, a message may be reassigned from the first user to the second user when the first user having more future meetings scheduled than the second user;
- wherein, according to the instructions, a message may be reassigned from the first user to the second user when the first user has a planned vacation;
- and
- wherein, according to the instructions, a message may be reassigned from the first user to the second user when the first user has more future deliverables than the second user.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.