Capacity Planning
- Last updated
- Save as PDF
- Capabilities
- Capacity Planning
Capacity Planning
The Capacity Planning capability supports the mechanism to set resource capacity targets used to analyze capacity against demand and assess the organization’s ability to continue with or adopt new investments. Each capability within the Planview Capability Framework has a distinct set of features and functionality, business processes, best practices, and analytics and reports that deliver value to customers in the form of specific business outcomes.
Capacity Planning Business Outcomes
We can set resource capacity targets to help balance existing and potential investments, and we can assess our ability to successfully deliver on those investments.
We can analyze how new investments may impact resource capacity within the context of our existing portfolio of approved investments.
We can quickly identify capacity constraints as investments are approved and reallocate resources to high-priority investments.
We can schedule investments across time to optimize resources.
Capacity Planning Processes
Implementing the Capacity Planning capability enables organizations to remain flexible and respond rapidly to changing priorities. Using robust investment, demand, and capacity data, managers can make iterative planning decisions about which investments to prioritize based on their capacity targets. Portfolio and resource managers can analyze and evaluate active and pipeline investments on a continuous basis, revisit assumptions, and make trade-off decisions that optimize their resources and costs.
Capacity Planning Process Steps
Capacity Planning provides the mechanism to set resource capacity time-phased targets at the relevant organizational level. These targets can be used to analyze demand and make assessments on the ability to continue with or adopt new investments. In Planview Enterprise One, Capacity Planning is typically performed in tandem with Prioritization and Scenario Analysis.
Capacity Planning Process Flow
Process Step | Description |
---|---|
Create/update the portfolio to include all investments that are ready for analysis/approval |
A Planning portfolio defines the capacity and demand entities to be used in investment analysis, i.e. where and which targets and demand you wish to analyze in a specified time range (Planning Horizon). Demand requirements for analysis of investments:
For more information: |
Create a scenario |
Creating investment and capacity planning scenarios allows you to model different investment decisions and various approaches to balancing investment demand with capacity. Creating a shared scenario allows you and others who have access to the relevant portfolio to work in a what-if environment until a particular scenario is ready to be published and shared as your organization's investment plan. When working in a shared environment, you and other users review the same proposed investment plan so that each of you can examine and update those portions that affect your respective areas. A Planning portfolio can also include user-defined scenarios created to model and evaluate different investment decisions and approaches to balancing capacity with demand in a what-if environment. Data in those scenarios can be modified without affecting the corresponding data in the portfolio's relevant financial plan as changes are made. For more information: |
Rank and prioritize investments |
Investment and Capacity Planning provides a mechanism to compile all investments (accepted, in-flight, and potential investments) and carry out an assessment and approval in the context of the whole portfolio. The Rank view within Investment and Capacity Planning provides the ability to sort the list of investments based on subjective or qualitative scoring and prioritization criteria to prioritize investments within the portfolio. This ranking is then used in subsequent screens in Investment and Capacity Planning as sorting criteria. Investments can be ranked automatically based on criteria and/or manually by the users of each scenario. Investments are displayed in ranked order within a scenario. If no ranking has been applied, investments are displayed alphabetically. If a scenario includes both ranked and unranked investments, unranked investments will display at the top in alphabetical order, and the ranked investments will display below in ascending order of their ranking.
Planning Manager tile—ranking investments
Planning Manager tile's Rank view—rank investments automatically |
Analyze against portfolio target |
The objective of this step is to confirm the approval of investments within the portfolio targets/constraints of costs and resource capacity. The Analyze view provides the ability to approve investments by moving them above the line (accepted) and seeing the impact on overall budgetary constraints and capacity. Any changes to the Investment Approval Status and Internal Priority in the Investment and Capacity screens are "what-if" changes and are not confirmed until the scenario is published to execution. To analyze investments "above and below the line":
Planning Manager tile – analyzing investments |
Shift investment dates and durations |
The Shift view provides visibility of where demand exceeds capacity by period, as well as the ability to shift investments to fit within available capacity. After portfolio investments have been ranked and analyzed, date ranges of approved and conditionally-approved investments are further evaluated. Constraint limitations on specific resource types may be resolved by shifting investment dates, and investments below the line may be approved.
Planning Manager tile—shifting investments
Planning Manager—Shift Highlighting Bottom Tray Details
Planning Manager tile—shift-highlighting the bottom tray details |
Balance against capacity |
The objective of this step is to identify resource capacity/demand issues or cost time-phasing issues and to smooth demand across time to plan to deliver the programs within the capacity and time-phased budget targets. The Balance view allows you to look at investments that have been accepted in the scenario, and the time-profiled impact of those investments against the capacity and budget targets. To balance investments:
Note: it's important to not accidentally model what-if decisions on the Shared Scenario. What-if modeling should be done on user-created scenarios and published to the shared scenario when you are ready to commit to the plan.
Planning Manager tile—balancing investments |
Baseline portfolio |
The purpose of this step is to capture a portfolio baseline in order to create a snapshot of the investment decisions and investments as of the end of the investment planning cycle. As the investment portfolio evolves and the program landscape continues to change, new programs arrive, or planned programs fluctuate in risk, forecasted cost or strategic alignment, a continuous reassessment of investment decisions and priorities will force amendments to the investment planning portfolio. This working version can then be compared against the baseline and variances analyzed. After creating versions, it's important to assign the correct Working Version or Comparison Version tags to see their respective values in column sets. See Managing Investment and Capacity Planning Scenarios for more information. The Planned Investments comparison view highlights financial differences between the working version and the comparison version. The top tray compares financial data differences based on the selected column set. The bottom tray compares investment approval status and rank order.
Planning Manager tile—Planned Investments pivot view
The Approval Decisions view compares Investment Approval statuses for multiple scenarios. Selection of scenarios is made in the Investment and Capacity Planning screen's preferences. If no scenarios are selected, this screen compares all scenarios. Investments are displayed in the same way as the bottom tray of the Planned Investments comparison view—by Above the Line, Trade-off, and Below the Line.
Planning Manager tile—Approval Decisions pivot view |
Compare scenarios |
By comparing multiple scenarios, you and other users who have access to a relevant portfolio can work in a what-if environment until a particular scenario is ready to be published and shared as your organization's investment plan. Data in those scenarios can be modified without affecting the corresponding data in the portfolio's relevant financial plan as changes are made. If there are multiple scenarios within a Planning portfolio, designate your Working scenario, then compare Planned Investments or compare Approval Decisions to display information to help you identify differences relevant to the financial data, investment approval status, ranking values of investments, and trade-off of approval decisions. |
Publish portfolio decisions and adjustments |
The purpose of this step is to publish the investment approval decisions that were made to the scenario during the ranking, analyzing, shifting, and balancing of investments versus organizational capacity. Based on the above-the-line (accepted) and below-the-line decisions made during this investment planning process, the Investment Approval Status values are updated accordingly—all accepted programs will be changed to an Investment Approval Status of Accepted. Investment Approval decisions made in a scenario are "what-if" and not visible and live until the publishing process is completed.
Note: in addition to investment approval decisions, any amendments to demand data of investments or the capacity/budget targets within the (non-shared) scenario will also be published live and update the financial planning detail screens accordingly for the investments and/or capacity in question.
Planning Manager tile—publish from the shared scenario
Planning Manager tile—publish from scenarios created by users (non-shared) |
Close investment |
The purpose of this step is to change the status of refused programs to Closed. If the program was in progress, any projects allocated to the program would need to be closed as well to prevent accumulation of additional time and costs. This step can be executed as part of a lifecycle process or completed manually. For more information: |
Outputs, Reports, and Analytics
This solution capability is supported by the following outputs, reports, and analytics:
Type | Associated Outputs, Reports, and Analytics | Description |
---|---|---|
Screen | Investment and Capacity Planning | Pivot to different views that guide you through the process of investment and capacity planning. These views help you analyze capacity and demand data in multiple ways by examining different capacity and demand dimensions. Some views let you compare scenarios to display information that assists you in understanding the impact investment decisions within different scenarios have on balancing demand with capacity. |
Analytic | WRK31 - Work Portfolio Financial Analysis | Work portfolio report that allows the analysis of project and portfolio financial plan data, including effort (FTEs/Days/Hours) or financial data (Cost/Benefit/Revenue). A single financial planning version is selected and the data type selected based on type and/or specific accounts. The slicer can be any work alternate structure or a line attribute of the selected accounts. |
Analytic | WRK32 - Work Portfolio Financial Burndown Comparison | Work portfolio report that allows the comparison of one/many versions of project and portfolio financial plan data, including effort (FTEs/Days/Hours) or financial data (Cost/Benefit/Revenue). |
Analytic | WRK33 - Project Cost or Revenue/Benefit Bubble | Work portfolio report that can select cost or revenue/benefit based measures from the financial planning data to drive bubble size. |
Analytic | WRK34 - Work Portfolio Investment Balance Bubble | Work portfolio report, based on financial plan data, where the user can select benefit/revenue measures for the X axis, cost-based measures for the bubble size, and a risk-based attribute for the Y axis. |
Capacity Planning Process Steps
Capacity Planning provides the mechanism to set resource capacity time-phased targets at the relevant organizational level. These targets can be used to analyze demand and make assessments on the ability to continue with or adopt new investments.
Capacity Planning Process Flow
Process Step | Description |
---|---|
Set capacity targets by enabling resource groups/role/resource |
Resourcing groups are configured by the administrator and are available to resource managers designated for those groups. For example, there may be a resource group configured that is R&D specific, but would exclude other groups such as Finance as that group is not relevant to the work being considered. Once the groups are configured, navigate to Capacity Planning to view groups you have access to by selecting All Groups. Select a specific group to get an in-depth view of resource availability and capacity.
View all groups or a specific group |
Monitor projects |
On the Capacity Planning page, bar charts display requests and assignments. The line chart displays the capacity of your resources. Below the charts, the heatmap represents resource demand and capacity. The heatmap threshold settings are configured by your administrator. In the Demand table, open the projects to see how resources are distributed over time. For more information: |
Analyze capacity against demand |
On the Capacity Planning page, use the top drop-down to toggle to Requested Demand Vs Availability to review open requests and remaining availability, or Demand Vs Capacity to see the full capacity of resources including already assigned work. Under Resources, use the dropdown to change the view to Resources, Users Only, or Job Titles. Make changes to the requested amounts as needed. If your resources are fully booked or you want to use resources from other groups, click the Filter icon to see resources in the Group or Sub Group to view additional resources. You can also filter by skills to quickly see which relevant resources are available, and assign them to the Project(s). Use Resource Planning Units to display work in FTEs, Hours, or Person Days. Change the calendar based on the project and planning length desired.
Change view options on the Capacity Planning
Use the Discussions feature to discuss requests and staffing request levels with the Project Manager. For more information: |
Shift project dates and durations |
From Project Details, durations and project dates may be adjusted. All project assignments and staffing requests in the project can be adjusted together using the Shift Dates button that appears in the Project Assignment and Staffing Request panels. This is especially useful when changing the Project's start date as it will shift all Project Assignments and Staffing Requests relative to the new start date.
Shift Dates |
Related Capabilities
Prioritization and Scenario Analysis
This capability provides the ability to compare, assess, prioritize, and rank all your potential and existing investments before the approval of your overall portfolio plan. The creation of what-if scenarios is also supported to inform investment decision-making.
Read moreProject Portfolio Planning
This capability supports a clearly defined process for the initiation of business requests into a single repository and provides a consistent demand management process for all new projects. It ensures an appropriate governance structure is applied throughout the project lifecycle.
Read moreFinancial Planning and Cost Management
This capability supports the planning and management of all financial information connected to programs and projects, including the creation of high-level estimates, approved and baseline budgets, actual costs to date, forecasts to complete costs, and variance reporting.
Read more
Supported Solutions