Resource Demand Overview

Resource demand planning enables project or resource managers to plan the role requirements needed for a particular project. During project planning, use the Resource Demand page to enter high-level demand units in weekly or monthly buckets. During project execution, use the page to copy role units from activity assignments. This makes it easy to manage resource demands from a project's early stages through execution, without having to maintain separate pages for high-level demand and more detailed assignments. Demand units are used in portfolio resource planning and scenario approval process.

In typical demand planning, high-level role demands are created during the early stages of a project to define general labor expectations before the project begins. Assign existing roles from the workspace level, and then enter demand units in time-phased intervals. After entering role demand units, they are reviewed at the portfolio level by a portfolio manager, who allocates and commits units to the roles as part of the portfolio resource planning process. Committed units are then displayed on the Resource Demand page as allocated units. If necessary, view the committed role allocation and enter updated demand units, which will again be submitted for review.

During later project planning and execution phases, more detailed role demands can be created and allocated based on a defined schedule of activities and assignments. The Resource Demand page enables you to copy role demands from existing activity resource assignments and overwrite the initial planning units.

Understanding Role Availability

You can enter units in time-phased intervals on the timescale as job-hours or as full-time equivalent (FTE) values. FTE represents the number of full-time employees needed to complete the work in a specified time period. Planning units using FTE values makes it easy to compare work requirements across time intervals with different durations (such as months) and manage multiple roles that may all have different calendar availabilities. Depending on your user preferences, FTE can be entered as units/duration (whole numbers and decimals) or as percentages. Use the following guidelines to fill in the FTE value:

• If only one full time employee is needed to complete the work for the time period specified, enter a value of 1.0 (or 100%) for the FTE.
• If more than one full time employee is needed to complete the work, enter a value that equals the number of employees needed. For example, if four full time employees are needed to complete the work, enter a value of 4.0 (or 400%) for the FTE.
• If the work can be done by part time employees or full time employees working less than the number of hours expected for the time period, you can enter the FTE in decimals to indicate the percentage of the time period that needs to be worked. For example, if you only need a part time employee working half of the hours expected for the time period, you can enter an FTE of 0.5 (or 50%). Or, for example, if the role needs to be done by a full time employee working full time and an additional part time employee working half of the hours, then you can enter an FTE of 1.5 (or 150%).