Resource Management
Resource Management
The Resource Management capability’s enablers include Resource Availability, Resource Assignments and Utilization, Time and Expense Management, and Agile Costing. 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.
Enablers and Business Outcomes
Resource Availability
Provides a single repository of resource availability information to the organization. Resulting business outcomes include:
- We can understand the impact of vacations, absences, and other overhead activities on resource capacity.
- We can determine the overall organizational capacity to deliver work; project and non-project work.
- We have accurate information on the non-availability of resources to factor into the portfolio capacity planning and resource management processes.
Resource Assignments and Utilization
Provides the ability to track and manage the assignments of named resources to work on projects or discrete activities within projects. Identify over and under allocations and understand future demand on teams. Resulting business outcomes include:
- Based on our organizational structure and resource role classifications, we can measure the demand for resources to deliver project and non-project work.
- We can determine and visualize the overall utilization of resource teams.
- We can assign demand to named resources.
- We can identify under- and over-utilized resources and take actions to optimize resource utilization.
Time and Expense Management
Monitor the progress of work, together with actual hours and costs. Resulting business outcomes include:
- Our resources can report actual hours worked through their weekly timesheet, including planned project work, other planned work, and non-planned work and absences.
- We can use timesheet data to update our project schedules with actual effort and dates to determine costs using resource rates.
- We can monitor timesheet status and measure compliance of timesheet submission and approval against our organizational targets, driving up-to-date project data and resource utilization data.
Agile Costing
Allows work being done by agile teams within AgilePlace to be used to automatically create timesheet entries, including categorizing the work into capitalization or operational expenses, all without requiring team members to manually fill out timesheets. Resulting business outcomes include:
- We can track the work being done by agile teams and use that data to automatically create timesheet entries for financial planning, including categorizing the work into capitalization (CAPEX) or operational (OPEX) expenses.
Best Practices
Monitor alignment to strategic goals
It’s crucial that resources remain aligned to strategic goals and projects, and having access to reports that track resources against the most high-priority projects will give you the ability to continuously monitor this alignment. Leverage PPM tool capabilities in this area to ensure data is kept consistent, reliable, and up to date.
Plan using different assignment types
Hard booking named resources works well for short-term planning when detailed information is known. Switch to soft-booking for medium-term planning and prioritization processes, and book unnamed, role-based resources for long-term planning or situations when the specific resource is unknown.
Model what-if scenarios
Creating what-if scenarios is a powerful tool for resource managers to try out different scenarios for rebalancing and optimizing resource assignments to projects and work—effectively optimizing resource allocation at both strategic and tactical levels. Managers can evaluate the impact of unplanned work, perform forward-looking resource planning, and view different resource and portfolio scenarios without impacting production data.
Account for non-project time
Ensure that administrative time and paid time off are accounted for when planning both long- and short-terms; realize there will be a natural time loss from common administrative tasks such as email and general meetings. Provide a mechanism to capture time spent on unplanned projects to maintain visibility into this reduction of capacity.
Implement time reporting
Tracking and reporting time delivers resource managers the visibility needed to ensure resources are focused on the right work, and allows them to make better resource allocation decisions. It provides data on the amount of effort certain tasks require—which can be used to improve forecasting—and allows stakeholders to evaluate the amount of time spent on projects that maximize ROI versus maintenance work.
Ensure resources have the right skillsets
The lack of necessary skillsets to deliver the required outcomes is a common problem among teams, especially with specific skillsets that are in high demand. Compare the skillsets that are required for the project against those your teams currently possess, and rather than sharing resources across teams, keep your teams fully dedicated to optimizing work execution that delivers value. Build out a dedicated team comprised of those with the skillsets in highest demand for the work you are committing to within your planning cycle.
Define a staffing process to ensure productivity
To ensure that the right resources are on the right work at the right time, resource managers should take the following actions: plan for an ongoing process to manage unexpected changes and conflicts; resolve conflicts based on strategic priorities; avoid multi-tasking or time-slicing resources; choose a specific staffing strategy (direct or managed approach); and ensure resources remain productive and happy by avoiding overutilization and offering options like training or certification programs.
Processes and Reports
Resource management allows you to optimize your strategic objectives by ensuring your resources are working on the right projects at the right time. By providing a single repository of resource availability information to your organization, resource managers can track and manage assignments of named resources, forecast future demand, perform what-if capacity and demand scenario planning, and collect time reporting information to measure actual project hours and costs.
Resource Availability Process Steps
Resource availability provides a single repository of resource availability information to the organization. Resources are associated with a calendar that defines overall working time. Resource capacity can be reduced by using defined activities such as holiday, illness, or administration. Resource availability can be managed by resource managers or resources themselves, reflecting the true capacity of the organization to deliver work and projects.
Resource availability process flow
| Process Step |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Manage resource availability (non-project work, planned absences) |
Capture resource commitments to standard activities (overhead, non-project activities such as company meetings, and other planned absences such as paid time off) to accurately record and understand resource availability for work, then compare and balance the availability against the resources' current allocations to determine current resource utilization. Resources should maintain records of their upcoming non-project activities (standard activities) to give resource managers an accurate picture of how much capacity each resource has for planned work. It’s important for budgeting and planning purposes to know how much time is spent in utilized standard activities like meetings and training, and how much is spent in non-utilized standard activities like vacation or sick days. Note that resource managers can also update standard activities for other resources if necessary. |
Resource Assignments and Utilization Process Steps
Resource assignments and utilization provides the ability to track and manage the assignments of named resources to work on projects or discrete activities within projects. Identify over and under allocations and understand future demand on their teams.
Resource assignments and utilization process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Identify incoming resource demand |
Identify and quantify all incoming demand placed against all resource types in teams to maintain a balanced and efficient level of utilization among resources. To quantify resource demand, project managers use requirements to request resource effort that is needed to complete a project. |
| Identify resource utilization issues | Identify over- or underutilized resources. Once these are identified, take mitigating actions to ensure the delivery of projects and effective use of organizational resources is maintained. |
| Feedback of resource comfort levels | Obtain feedback from individual resources to determine how each feels about their current workload; this can help determine whether resources are over- or underutilized. |
| Manage resource utilization |
Quantify and balance resource utilization in the context of effort and budget capacity to determine the ability of the organization to deliver work. Ensure the workload for resources remains balanced—neither over- nor underutilized. Using techniques such as eliminating resource overload, a resource manager can balance a project's resource demand against resource capacity to make informed decisions about resource utilization. This ensures an accurate view into the organization's ability to deliver work and manage resource effort and costs efficiently. Resource managers can also balance resource utilization and manage resource assignments from the Resource Management and Assignments screen. |
| Prioritize work |
Project managers and resource managers should maintain a two-way dialog throughout the execution, prioritizing work items to ensure resources can be assigned to the higher-priority items. Managers can also use values from attributes that indicate the priority ranking, internal priority, or requestor priority to help adjust the ranking of planned work items. |
| Approve request/assign resources |
Identify and manage incoming resource requests and approve accordingly. |
| Balance workload |
Take actions to maintain a balanced workload; it may be appropriate to delay some of the work to a more suitable time or to increase resource capacity. |
| Substitute resource |
Manage critically over- and underutilized resources by making resource substitutions, allowing resource managers to maintain the resource commitment effort required to deliver the work. Changes from the planned resource utilization, such as unexpected leave or the slippage of project activities, could leave resources critically over-utilized and should be managed so resources can complete the work. |
Time and Expense Management Process Steps
Time and expense management monitors the progress of work along with actual hours and costs. Time reporting information is collected through the submission of timesheets; recording the hours spent each day by each resource on project activities and other work. This enables project actual hours and costs to be efficiently collected and used to update project progress and re-forecast future work. This also allows work being done by agile teams within LeanKit to be used to automatically create timesheet entries, including categorizing the work into capitalization or operational expenses, all without requiring team members to manually fill out timesheets.
Time and expense management process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Do work |
Resources carry out the work that has been assigned to them. |
| Report hours | The resources doing the work use timesheets to record when work was done and how many hours of effort were expended. |
|
Submit timesheet |
Resources sign and submit their timesheet once they report the time they spent on their work tasks. Once the timesheet is submitted, it is automatically sent to the appropriate resource for approval. |
|
Approved timesheets integrated into actual effort |
Once submitted and approved, timesheet hours (effort) and actual start/finish dates, along with percent complete, are integrated into the project schedule when the weekly Progressing Engine runs. The Progressing Engine processes inputs for projects to determine actual progress and calculates the amount of remaining work and when it can be completed. The Progressing Engine is a scheduled process that generally runs weekly that applies actual progress to the project schedule and moves unfinished work forward in the schedule (since it cannot be completed in the past). For more information about the Progressing Engine, see the Using the Progressing Engine guide. |
Agile Costing Process Steps
Agile costing allows work being done by agile teams within LeanKit to be used to automatically create timesheet entries, including categorizing the work into capitalization or operational expenses, all without requiring team members to manually fill out timesheets.
Agile costing process flow
| Process Step |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Do work |
Resources carry out the work that has been assigned to them. |
|
Agile costing automatically calculates time |
When an organization has Agile costing enabled, agile team members use cards on Kanban boards in Planview LeanKit to track their own work as they normally would for those work items. The connector then uses the position of those cards and how recently each card was modified to create timesheet entries in Planview Portfolios. Managers can then use the data from the Planview Portfolios timesheets as if each team member had manually filled out a timesheet themselves. |
|
Approved timesheets integrated into actual effort |
Once submitted and approved, timesheet hours (effort) and actual start/finish dates, along with percent complete, are integrated into the project schedule when the weekly Progressing Engine runs. The Progressing Engine processes inputs for projects to determine actual progress and calculates the amount of remaining work and when it can be completed. The Progressing Engine is a scheduled process that generally runs weekly that applies actual progress to the project schedule and moves unfinished work forward in the schedule (since it cannot be completed in the past). For more information about the Progressing Engine, see the Using the Progressing Engine guide. |
Resource Availability
Resource availability provides a single repository of resource availability information to the organization. Resources are associated with a calendar that defines overall working time. Resource capacity can be reduced by using defined activities such as holiday, illness, or administration. Resource availability can be managed by resource managers or resources themselves, reflecting the true capacity of the organization to deliver work and projects.
Resource availability process flow
| Process Step |
Description |
|---|---|
|
Manage resource availability (non-project work, planned absences) |
Resource availability is defined by adding typical working hours, company holidays, and planned absences to the organizational, group, and user calendars.
Resources can also define their availability by limiting their availability for new projects in the Properties Card. Resource managers use the Resource Load module to view the resource availability of their direct reports, groups they manage, and their own assigned work. For more information: |
Resource Assignments and Utilization
Resource assignments and utilization provides the ability to track and manage the assignments of named resources to work on projects or discrete activities within projects. Identify over and under allocations and understand future demand on their teams.
Resource assignments and utilization process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Identify incoming resource demand |
Use the Requested Demand vs. Availability view in the Capacity Planning module to identify and quantify all incoming demand placed against resources to maintain a balanced and efficient level of resource utilization. To quantify resource demand, project managers submit Staffing Requests for resource effort that is needed to complete a project. Resource managers can also view resource load and availability for individuals and groups they directly manage in the Resource Load module. |
| Identify resource utilization issues |
Identify over- or underutilized resources. Once these are identified, take mitigating actions to ensure the delivery of projects and effective use of organizational resources is maintained. |
| Feedback of resource comfort levels | Obtain feedback from individual resources to determine how each feels about their current workload to determine whether resources are over- or underutilized. |
| Manage resource utilization |
Quantify and balance resource utilization in the context of demand and capacity to determine the ability of the organization to deliver work. Ensure the workload for resources remains balanced and is neither over- nor underutilized. Using techniques such as eliminating resource overload, a resource manager can balance a project's resource demand against resource capacity to make informed decisions about resource utilization. This ensures an accurate view into the organization's ability to deliver work and manage resource effort and costs efficiently. For more information: |
| Prioritize work |
Project managers and resource managers should maintain a two-way dialog throughout the work plan execution, and use the Demand table in the Capacity Planning module to sort projects by priority and ensure resources are assigned to the higher-priority projects. Resource managers can discuss staffing requests with project managers using the Discussions feature. Project managers receive Staffing Request changes through email notifications and daily status updates, and can view updates in the Staffing Requests panel. |
| Approve request/assign resources |
Resource managers review, approve, assign, or reject resource requests for projects. If a request is rejected, a discussion post with the reason why can be created for the project manager to view in the staffing requests panel. For more information: |
| Balance workload |
Take actions to maintain a balanced workload; it may be appropriate to redistribute resources, shift assignments, or increase resource capacity. In the Capacity Planning module, resource managers can view resource load and demand by group, job title, or user, identify potential bottlenecks, create “what-if” scenarios, evaluate resource availability, and assign resources based on current and forecasted demand. Resource managers can also balance resource utilization and manage resource assignments for groups and users they manage in the Resource Load module. For more information: |
| Reassign resources |
Manage critically over- and underutilized resources by using the Review and Assign function in the Capacity Planning module, or reassign resources in the Resource Load view. This allows resource managers to maintain the resource commitment effort required to deliver the work. Changes from the planned resource utilization, such as unexpected leave or the slippage of project activities, could leave resources critically over-utilized, and should be managed so resources can complete the work. |
Time and Expense Management
Time and expense management monitors the progress of work along with actual hours and costs. Time reporting information is collected through the submission of timesheets; recording the hours spent each day by each resource on project activities and other work. This enables project actual hours and costs to be efficiently collected and used to update project progress and re-forecast future work. This also allows work being done by agile teams within AgilePlace to be used to automatically create timesheet entries, including categorizing the work into capitalization or operational expenses, all without requiring team members to manually fill out timesheets.
Time and expense management process flow
| Process Step | Description |
|---|---|
| Do work |
Resources carry out the work that has been assigned to them. |
| Report hours |
In the Timesheet module, resources report time spent doing work on timesheets. Resources can report time spent on assigned tasks, as well as add a work item to report time on unplanned work. Other supported features include resources reporting time on work items, and the automation of time reporting using the AdaptiveWork Bot. |
|
Submit timesheet |
Resources submit their timesheet after they report time spent on tasks. Timesheets can also be configured to auto-submit time. |
| Approval |
Timesheets are reviewed and approved in the Approvals module. The timesheet approver role is flexible, and can be delegated to a project manager, resource manager, direct manager, or temporary approver. There are three timesheet approval process options, and the preferred timesheet approval flow can be selected in System Settings:
For more information: |
|
Approved timesheets integrated into actual effort |
Once timesheet approval is granted, resource hours are reflected in the related projects and percentage complete is updated on work items. |
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