什么是工作量管理？提高工作效率的策略

工作量管理是针对团队工作进行规划、分配与跟踪的流程，旨在确保任务在团队成员间均衡分配、截止时间切实可行，以及资源得到高效利用。

其理想状态是：团队中无人任务不足、无人超负荷工作，也无人因等待依赖项交付工作而停滞。若执行得当，工作量管理能够帮助团队高效确定任务优先级、预判潜在瓶颈，并确保项目始终按既定范围推进。

例如，当软件开发团队筹备产品发布时，项目经理可借助工作量管理工具查看时间表，评估每位团队成员的任务量。他们可能会发现，某位开发者任务过载，而另一位尚有富余产能。

随后，项目经理即可在维持项目时间线不变的前提下，重新分配任务。

Workload management and resource management are complementary aspects of running operations. Resource planning, which entails gathering the right people and tools, has to be in place before the workload can be addressed.

• Workload management deals with “how” tasks are assigned and ensures they are prioritized and aligned with project goals.

• Resource management focuses on “what” is required to perform the work, including the staff, budgets, and materials, and ensures they are appropriately allocated to meet organizational needs.

In effect, workload management is the tactical layer that resource management tools refer to for proper execution. Together, the two concepts form a continuous loop of planning, execution, and optimization.

Teams that manage workloads effectively achieve higher productivity, greater engagement, and better results. A 2024 meta-analysis of studies by Gallup confirmed previous reports that highly engaged teams show 23% greater profitability. 

Additionally, other Gallup resources have stated that unreasonable workloads are a major factor in hampering engagement. Here’s why proper workload management matters:

• Prevents burnout: By keeping workloads balanced, managers help prevent chronic stress and fatigue.

• Boosts productivity: When tasks are clearly prioritized, teams can focus and deliver faster.

• Improves transparency: Shared workload visibility fosters collaboration and accountability.

• Enhances retention: Employees who feel supported and fairly treated are more likely to stay.

So how do workloads become skewed in the first place?

It usually happens gradually: a few urgent requests here, a change of focus there, until the balance between capacity and demand has slipped. Teams begin to stretch themselves thin and deadlines start overlapping. 

Here are a few of the common workload imbalances that can arise in this way—and how to solve them

1. Over-allocation and burnout

• Challenge: Team members take on too much work due to unclear capacity limits.

• Solution: Use capacity planning tools to visualize workloads and set maximum thresholds per person. For example, a workflow management tool might offer options like Workload Pie Chart and Resource Allocation Reports, which provide a fully transparent overview of the load distribution.

2. Shifting priorities

• Challenge: Projects evolve, and priorities can switch from one day to the next.

• Solution: Build flexibility into schedules. Use sprint planning and backlog refinement sessions to reallocate resources as priorities change.

3. Out-of-sync updates

• Challenge: Without a clear, real-time assessment of progress, bottlenecks go unnoticed until it’s too late.

• Solution: Implement dashboards in Jira to monitor workloads, progress, and deadlines. Visual reporting helps teams self-manage more effectively.

Workload management is a combination of mindset and method. It starts with the right intention—to cultivate awareness and aim for sustainable performance—coupled with structured planning, regular reviews, and the smart use of automation.

Below are ten actionable strategies, supported by Jira’s built-in tools, that will help your team stay productive and balanced.

1. Assess team availability, skills, and workload

Start by mapping out your team’s capacity and skill sets. Those are the basic building blocks of realistic planning: knowing who’s available and who’s best equipped for certain tasks.

Tools like Jira’s Capacity Planning view or a simple Confluence table can help visualize workloads. Combine this with skills mapping so tasks align with strengths, not just schedules.

Pro tip: Integrate capacity data from Confluence into Jira dashboards to track both time and expertise allocation in one place.

2. 利用数据确定任务的优先级

仅凭截止时间无法体现各项任务背后的目的与价值。RICE（影响范围、影响力、信心水平、工作量）或 MoSCoW（必须有、应该有、可以有、不会有）等框架可帮助您基于可量化的预期影响力评估工作。

Jira 中人工智能支持的优先级排序工具能够根据业务预期或活动与其他依赖项的关联度，自动为活动评分或重新排序。这能在任务规划中摒弃主观偏好，让工作重心更多聚焦于成果。

3. Manage your team backlog regularly to prevent task overload

Use backlog management tools to keep workloads manageable. Regular backlog grooming (or refinement) helps you review and remove outdated or duplicate tasks so the team isn’t overwhelmed by clutter.

Jira’s Backlog View automatically organizes tasks by priority and sprint, but also allows manual reorganization by dragging and dropping tasks as needed. You can filter by sprint, team capacity or assignee, and then strategically arrange the workload based on real-time context and on-the-ground knowledge.

4. Distribute work fairly based on skill sets

Use the insights from Step 1 to assign the work correctly. Jira’s Workload Distribution Reports or Resource Allocation will help you identify imbalances early and reassign tasks based on availability or expertise.

This promotes fairness based on real-time data with transparent communication, ensuring everyone operates at a sustainable pace or capacity.

5. Use visual dashboards to track workloads and project progress

Visual dashboards give teams an at-a-glance view of project health. They increase accountability, reduce ambiguity, and simplify reporting.

Jira dashboards can display everything from issue counts and burndown charts to workload heat maps. They’re particularly effective for team retrospectives, helping identify where effort is being spent and how to optimize it moving forward.

6. Automate repetitive or low-value tasks

Automation is one of the simplest ways to reclaim lost time. Identify recurring administrative operations, like updating issue statuses or sending reminders, and configure them to run automatically.

Jira’s AI Work Breakdown and AI Work Create features generate subtasks or draft issue descriptions when triggered, and can even suggest next steps. Automation frees up time for strategic work, but also helps maintain consistency across teams and projects because repetitive steps are executed the same way every time.

7. Build in regular workload reviews and feedback loops

Set recurring check-ins to discuss workloads, priorities, and blockers. These can be lightweight weekly stand-ups or monthly retrospectives, depending on your team’s rhythm.

Encourage open dialogue: ask what’s working, what isn’t, where support is needed, and what that support should look like. Over time, these conversations build trust and make workload adjustments easier to manage collaboratively.

8. Plan for flexibility when priorities shift

In agile environments, change is inevitable: priorities, customer needs, and market conditions evolve faster than any static plan can anticipate. Prepare for this by building buffer time into sprint cycles and using predictive analytics to anticipate workload spikes.

For example, Jira’s Advanced Roadmaps can model “what-if” scenarios, allowing managers to adjust workloads before issues arise or become disruptive. It’s also just as easy to create an issue—with helpful context—into the backlog so teams can understand what the work entails and its priority.

9. 跟踪指标以衡量产出与平衡

要改进工作量管理，您需要能清晰掌握准确的数据。关键指标包括：

• 周期时间：任务从开始到完成所需的时间。

• 吞吐量：每个周期完成的任务数量。

• 利用率：投入到富有成效、创造价值的工作中的时间占比。

借助 Jira 的仪表板分析功能或自定义 Confluence 报告，您可以梳理这些结果、识别趋势，从而确认团队绩效是否保持健康且具备可持续性。

10. Foster a culture that values sustainable performance

Finally, to instill a workload management mindset, leaders must promote the values of transparency, communication, and respect for personal capacity.

Retrospectives help employees reflect on the value of managing workload balances because they can see how careful planning and proper distribution of effort benefit everyone. 

At the same time, in cases of burnout, they can see whether this was due to bottlenecks or stretched capacity. And by dedicating time to these analyses, managers show that they have the employees’ best interests at heart.

Workload management templates can walk you through the above best practices in a standardized, repeatable way, ensuring the best outcome every time. 

Here are three purpose-built templates within the Jira ecosystem that simplify planning, tracking, and optimization for teams of all sizes.

1. Jira sprint backlog template

Perfect for agile teams, the sprint backlog template helps organize sprint work, prioritize issues, and visualize progress. Project backlogs and standard tasks can be filtered by assignee or priority, ensuring a clear picture of who’s working on what, and whether workloads are balanced.

Best for: Scrum teams needing visibility into sprint-level tasks and workloads.

2. Jira top-level planning template

For managing workload distribution across multiple projects, the top-level template provides a comprehensive overview. Managers can track overall progress, balance resources, and identify risks early, without overlap or confusion between projects.

Best for: Program or portfolio managers coordinating several projects simultaneously.

3. Jira task tracking template

Ideal for hybrid or cross-functional teams, the task-tracking template allows for granular visibility into individual workloads when ownership, progress, and dependencies need to be clearly defined. It ensures everyone knows what’s in motion and who’s responsible, aiding accurate planning and smoother coordination across complex team structures.

Best for: Teams seeking transparency and real-time insight into task progress, accountability, and blockers.

Workload management may sound like micromanagement, a term that often carries negative connotations. However, in essence, it’s a way of showing team members how they can benefit from clarity, balance, and continuous improvement.

When they can see what’s on their plate, where their time is going, and how their work connects to bigger goals, the natural response is to perform better.

With Jira, teams gain visibility into capacity and progress, can automate repetitive work, and run analytics that guide smarter decisions. Teams that combine Jira with Confluence learn how to centralize documentation, share reports, and collaborate seamlessly, creating a connected ecosystem for solid results through better planning and execution.

Use free sprint backlog template