Role-based Capacity Planning

Analysis of investments is achieved by comparing what’s available, Capacity (which can be in the form of resource capacity or financial a budget against what is required) versus Demand (derived by the forecast of programs in the portfolio).

To carry out portfolio investment and capacity planning, it is essential that an accurate recording of target budget and resource capacity is captured within Planview Enterprise One – PRM. To do so, planners enter the budget and resource capacity targets into the financial plan for the relevant capacity entities (in this case, strategic initiatives), against which demand financial plans can be balanced (in this case, programs). Analyzing the demand versus the capacity data for the portfolio lets an organization ensure the right resources are available at the right time, and that they stay within available budgets for labor and non-labor costs.

In terms of resource capacity targets, this will be in the form of high level resource costs (budget) against the relevant labor account lines in the strategic initiative financial plan. This can be done by navigating to the relevant strategic entity directly, or via a strategic portfolio, and accessing the financial plan via the action menu ().

Alternatively, capacity budgets and targets can also be managed from within a planning portfolio. Capacity Portfolio Manager shows a summarized capacity total broken down by the capacity slicer in the portfolio definition and also allows planners to drill into the financial plans for each individual capacity entity. 

For more information, see the following articles:

• Financial Planning Detail Screen Basics
• Capacity Portfolio Manager Screen Basics
• Updating Capacity and Demand Data by Accessing the Financial Plan

Milestones and releases at the program level are added directly from the Strategy View screen.

The color of the displayed milestones and releases are specified in the Strategy Portfolio Preferences.

The program roadmap graphically represents the schedule of strategic entities, allocated work, outcomes, milestones, and releases of a strategic plan.

At the program level, two sets of dates are visible:

• Target dates represent the planned dates for the program.
• Actual/Schedule dates represent the earliest start and latest finish of associated entities.

For more information see the following articles:

• Strategy View Screen Basics
• Strategy Roadmap
• Customizing the Strategy Roadmap's Display
• Reviewing Milestones on the Strategy Roadmap
• Strategic Milestones

Planning portfolios define where and which targets and demand you wish to analyze and for which time range (Planning Horizon).

Demand requirements for analysis:

• Demand must not be in the Investment Approval Status of pending.
• Demand must match the selected capacity.
• Demand must be within the defined Planning Horizon.
• Demand must be part of the additional portfolio definition.

For more information, see the following articles:

• About Creating Planning Portfolios
• Creating Planning Portfolios
• Planning Portfolio Use Cases
• Precise Planning for Parts of your Organization (Out of Portfolio)

Investment and capacity planning lets you define an investment plan in a shared environment by working in investment and capacity planning scenarios that are portfolio-specific. 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.

Investment and capacity planning scenarios let you model different investment decisions and various approaches to balancing investment demand with capacity. By using multiple scenarios, you and other users who have access to a relevant portfolio can work in a what-if environment until it is determined that a particular scenario is ready to be published and thereby shared with others as your organization's investment plan.

For more information about scenarios, see Managing Investment and Capacity Planning Scenarios.

See Using Shared Scenarios within Investment and Capacity Planning for an example of the use of shared scenarios.

The purpose of this step is to Rank your organizational investments to determine their priority.

Investment and Capacity Planning provides a mechanism to compile all investments (accepted, in-flight, and potential programs) 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 determine a priority between the investments within the portfolio. This ranking is then used in subsequent screens in Investment 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 the order that they have been ranked within a scenario. If no ranking has been applied in the scenario, 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.

For more information see the following articles:

• Ranking Investments
• Automatically Rank Investments Based on Criteria
• Dragging Investments to Rank Them
• Defining Threshold Lines for the Rank View
• Removing an Investment's Ranking
• Alerts

Investment and Capacity Planning provides a mechanism to compile all investments (accepted, in-flight and potential programs) and carry out an assessment and approval in the context of the whole portfolio. The Analyze view provides the ability to approve (that is, to set the Investment Approval Status to Accepted) programs by moving them above the line (accepted) and seeing the impact on overall budgetary constraints and capacity. Any changes made to Investment Approval Status and Internal Priority made in the Investment and Capacity screens are "what-if" changes and are not confirmed until the scenario is published to execution.

​The objective of this stage is the process is to confirm the approval of investments within the portfolio targets/constraints of costs and resource capacity.

To analyze investments "above and below the line":

• Investments in this view are displayed in two trays:
  • The upper tray represents above-the-line investments with Accept or Conditionally Accept statuses.
  • Investments in the lower tray represent below-the-line investments with Refuse or Analyze statuses.
• If the investments exceeding targets are in the below-the-line investments, it means that while the total of the portfolio will exceed the targets, the current above-the-line investments will not exceed the target.
• Depending on the selected column set, you can also view different summarized financial information.
• To make investment decisions (to approve or refuse an investment), you can open the action menu () next to each investment to select the desired status. Using the options in this menu, you can also view other information about the investment. Alternatively, you can use a drag-and-drop operation to move the investments between the above the line and below the line trays.

For more information see Updating Investment Approval Status and Priority or Reviewing a Gantt Chart in Investment and Capacity Planning.

The Shift view provides a view of where demand exceeds capacity by period, as well as the ability to shift programs to fit within the available capacity.

After all the investments in a portfolio have been ranked and analyzed, the investment scenarios may be further evaluated to review the date ranges of the approved and conditionally approved investments. There may be constraint limitations on specific resource types that may be resolved by shifting dates of the investments. Investments previously below the line may be able to become approved if the dates are shifted.

For more information see the following articles:

• Shift Investments
• Data Display and Layout of the Shift View
• Shifting Investments to Resolve Capacity Issues

Investment and Capacity Planning provides a mechanism to compile all investments (accepted, in-flight, and potential programs) and carry out an assessment and approval in the context of the whole portfolio. The Balance view allows you to look at investments that have been accepted in the scenario and to look at the time profiled impact of the investments against the capacity and budget targets.

The objective of this stage in the process 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.

To balance Investments:

• In the Balance Investments view, you use the category menu to decide what information you wish to view. In this example, we are viewing Labor Currency. You can also view Labor Effort by selecting Labor and Effort. Depending on your usage model, you can also view Expense, Capitalized Costs, and Benefits.
• This Focus Control option displays the controls available for you to organize the information when you perform drill-down for analysis.
• The controls available allow you to decide how many attributes to be included in the summarization for drill down, by moving them to the left of the focus control bar, then you decide which order they should be presented. The control on the far left will be the first level of drill down, following by attributes to its right.
• Information on the grid at the lowest level is editable when you are viewing a user-created scenario or the Shared Scenario if it is editable.
• Action menus () at the program level provide options to view additional information for the program.
• Action menus at the lowest level provide options to update attributes of the line or to model changes to the demand.
• Action menus from the Capacity levels provide the option to view the financial plan of the selected capacity to model changes to defined capacity.
• Use the Scenario options to change the scenario you are viewing or to create and manage scenarios. It is 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.

For more information see the following articles:

• Updating Capacity and Demand Data in Investment and Capacity Planning
• Changing Account Line Attributes in Investment and Capacity Planning
• Updating Capacity and Demand Data by Accessing the Financial Plan

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 about the 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 is important to assign the correct Working Version or Comparison Version tags to see their respective values in column sets.

For more information about scenarios, see Managing Investment and Capacity Planning Scenarios.

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.

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.

For more information see the following articles:

• Planned Investments View
• Approval Decisions View
• Compare Investments

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.

• If the investment approvals have been made in the Shared Scenario then the Publish from the Shared Scenario transaction will make the decisions live.
• If the investment approvals have been made in another (not shared) scenario then the Publish from Scenario can be used to move the investment decisions to just the shared scenario or to the demand as well.

It is important to note that, as well as the investment approval decisions, any amendments to the demand data of investments or the capacity/budget targets within the (non-shared) scenario will also be published to live and will update the financial planning detail screens accordingly for the investments and/or capacity in question.

For more information see the following articles:

• Publishing the Current Version of an Investment Plan as the Official Plan
• Publishing a Scenario in Investment and Capacity Planning
• About Lifecycles and the Publication of the Shared Scenario

The purpose of this step is to change the status of programs which are refused 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 completed as part of a lifecycle process, or can be done manually.

For more information see Reviewing or Modifying a Strategic Entity's Details.