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Resource Planning

This section contains the following topics:

Overview (Resource Planning)

Resource Planning Portlets

Overview (Resource Planning)

Use the Resource Planning portlet to monitor and compare resource allocations, check availability of resource time, remaining work for a resource, and actuals. The following list defines these terms:

Availability

Defines the number of hours that a resource is available for work or is expected to work in one business day.

Default Value: 8

You can calculate weekly availability using the following equation:

Weekly Availability = (Availability) x (Number of business days per week in the assigned resource calendar)

For example, if the Availability value for a resource is eight and the number of business days per week in the assigned resource calendar is five,

Weekly availability = 8 x 5 = 40 hours per week

Allocation

Defined as booking a resource as a staff member to an investment. An allocation amount is generated for each resource. You can calculate resource allocation using the following equation:

Resource allocation amount = (Availability) x (Number of resource workdays during the investment time period)

The number of working days for an individual resource during an investment is based on the resource calendar. All days that a resource is available during an investment time period are counted, including the start and finish dates.

For example, the following list shows the weekly availability of some resources during an investment time period:

If all the resources are allocated at 100 percent to the investment for three weeks, their allocation is as follows:

If you attempt to over-allocate a resource by staffing the resource to additional investments, you are warned. An over-allocated resource cannot perform work efficiently or complete work by the established end date. For this reason, it is important to be aware of how resources are allocated to investments.

Remaining work

Future work for a resource on an investment. This term is also known as estimate to complete (ETC).

Actuals

Work that has been completed and posted to an investment.

Use the Resource Planning portlet to manage resource and role allocations in the following ways:

Changes that you make on the Resource Planning pages update the data on the investment. You can view the changes that you make on the Resource Planning pages on the Team Staff page for the investment.

Best Practice: When you adjust resource allocations, inform the investment manager about the changes. The manager can then adjust task assignments and the schedule for the investment to accommodate the changes to team members you introduced.

Resource Planning Portlets

The following table lists the Resource Planning pages with portlets.

Resource Planning Page

Description

Portlets

Capacity

This page lists overall resource demand against resource capacity across all investments. The page aggregates information by role and presents information by month. You can view how total demand varies from total capacity for each role.

  • Role Capacity Histogram
  • Role Capacity

Organizational Demand

This page lists and aggregates demand for all investments and resources by OBS. You can view allocation data at different levels within the selected OBS unit.

  • OBS Resource Aggregation
  • OBS Investment Aggregation

Top Down Planning

This page lists investments and the resources and roles that are allocated to each investment.

  • Top Down Planning by Investment

Workloads

This page uses a graphical format to display the combined allocations across all investments for the assigned resource. Use this page to compare the availability with the number of hours that are allocated for a resource to an investment.

  • Resource Workloads

Allocations

This page provides several options to view and edit resource allocations on individual investments.

  • Weekly Detail
  • Allocation Discrepancy

Unfilled Allocations

This page provides a list of roles that are booked to all investments and displays unfilled demand across your organization.

  • Unfilled Requirements

Bookings

This page provides a list of resources with information about their booking status for all investments.

 

  • Booking Status

You can view the following information from the portlets:

Note: Click inside an allocation cell to change the allocation value for a resource or role.

More information:

Role Capacity Histogram Portlet

Role Capacity Portlet

OBS Resource Aggregation Portlet

OBS Investment Aggregation Portlet

Top Down Planning by Investment Portlet

Resource Workloads

Weekly Detail Portlet

Allocation Discrepancy Portlet

Unfilled Requirements Portlet

Booking Status Portlet

Role Capacity Histogram Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.roleCapacityHistogram

System Provider: Roles with Resource Allocation

Description

The Role Capacity Histogram portlet displays the overall demand against capacity for roles across all investments. The information is aggregated by role and is organized for each month and grouped under quarters. You can view how total demand varies from total capacity for each role. The information is displayed in a graphical format with the information stacked vertically in each month's column.

The colors in the graph represent the following information:

Note: The threshold is set to change the bar color from yellow to red when the demand exceeds capacity.

Role Capacity Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.roleCapacity

System Provider: Roles with Resource Allocation

Description

The Role Capacity portlet displays the overall demand against resource capacity across all investments. The information is aggregated by role and is organized for each month. You can view how total demand varies from total capacity for each role.

When evaluating role capacity, you can consider planned but yet-to-be hired resources. If planned hires do not actually get hired, you can exclude these resources to view the difference they cause in role capacity. To include or exclude to-be-hired resources, click the Expand Filter icon from the toolbar and indicate the desired option for the Include To-be-hired Resources field.

OBS Resource Aggregation Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.OBSResourceAggregation

System Provider: OBS Resource Aggregation

Description

The OBS Resource Aggregation portlet displays the overall demand and capacity for resources across all investments. The information is aggregated by OBS units. Drill through the OBS hierarchy to an individual OBS to view resource allocation by OBS unit. Allocation for each resource appears in terms of a full-time equivalent (FTE).

FTE is measured as follows:

To see data on this portlet, expand the filter, set an OBS unit type and click Filter. We recommend defining and saving a default filter for this portlet so that it automatically displays data that is appropriate for your organization.

OBS Investment Aggregation Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.OBSInvestmentAggregation

System Provider: OBS Investment Aggregation

Description

The OBS Investment Aggregation portlet displays the aggregated demand for investments by OBS units. Demand is calculated using the planned allocation for all resources booked to investments for the selected OBS units.

Best Practice: Define and save a default filter for this portlet to display appropriate data.

Top Down Planning by Investment Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.topDownPlanning

System Provider: Team Allocations

Description

This portlet lists the resources and roles for each investment. The allocation by month for each resource is provided. Use this portlet to edit the resources and allocations for an investment.

Resource Workloads

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.resourceWorkloads

System Provider: Resources with Aggregation

Description

The Resource Workloads portlet uses a graphical format to display the combined allocations across all the investments for the assigned resource. Use this page to compare the availability with the number of hours that are allocated for a resource by investment.

By default, allocations are displayed in color by week. You can use the Time-scaled Value option available from the Options menu to change the time period to bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly.

The colors in the graphical portion of the portlet represent the following information:

Weekly Detail Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.weeklyDetail

System Provider: Team Allocations

Description

The Weekly Detail portlet provides the resource allocations for each investment for a 10-week default period.

Allocation Discrepancy Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.allocationDiscrepancy

System Provider: Actuals vs Allocation Discrepancy

Description

This portlet displays the difference between allocated hours for a resource and the actual hours that the resource is charged for investments. You can specify which resources to display by altering the Deviation Threshold percentage value in the filter section of the portlet. By default, 20 percent is the deviation threshold. The Duration field determines how many periods to use for the calculation of allocations and posted actuals. The Time Scale field determines the period length to use for the calculation.

Unfilled Requirements Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.unfilledAllocations

System Provider: Team Allocations

Description

This portlet displays roles that are booked to investments. The roles represent demand within the organization. Typically, named resources replace roles as part of staffing activities.

Booking Status Portlet

Portlet Properties

Portlet ID: projmgr.bookingStatus

System Provider: Team Allocations

Description

Use the Booking Status portlet to view and edit resource booking status and other allocation information by investment. The portlet provides the following information for each resource by investment: Role, booking status, start and finish dates, allocation hours, and allocation percentage.