Resource Planning Overview

The Resource Planning page provides a time-phased view where portfolio managers can evaluate resource constraints and make the right project selections. This is where the high-level resource planning occurs.

Use the Resource Planning page to:

• Create multiple scenarios to model a variety of resource plans based on different sets of criteria.
• View individual role demands by project, and analyze role availability issues using charts, histograms, and tables.
• Allocate labor units and revise allocation start dates to resolve role availability issues.
• View total and time-phased costs for demand, allocation, and committed role units to aid your project selection decisions.
• Select a subset of projects for inclusion in the resource plan that satisfy all of your resource constraints.
• Use the resource planning optimization tool to suggest an optimal selection of projects for inclusion in the resource plan.
• Send resource planning scenarios out for review to stakeholders in the planning group to evaluate the mix of projects.
• Send the proposed scenario to project managers to negotiate the role allocation demand with the project manager for each project.
• Send the final scenario out for final approval, and approve the plan to commit allocations to roles.

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%).