Three Views of Resource Management

Overview

The content below is to help shape best practices for WSU ITS around Resource Management as a whole. We will be looking at 3 different views as it relates to managing resources capacity within TeamDynamix. 

Concept

This articles' goals include: Explaining Resource Management concepts, how to apply within TDX, different views of your teams' availability and tips to apply concepts within TDX to prevent over or under allocating your team members' assignments and when to start new projects. As a Director or Manager of individuals working on projects, it's important to think about what your team members assignments in three time categories:  a) Administrative time includes examples of vacation days, dentist appt, staff meetings, holidays, etc. approximately 10%; b) Ticket time for normal service requests/ incidents tickets work, try to minimize this time so more time is available for projects and c) time spent on project tasks. Once set up in TDX, you can see views by person, project, or resource pool to determine if a new project can be started without over allocated resources. You will be able to determine through different views what is assigned before giving them additional work. An example:

 A person's capacity settings typically do not change, and the capacity value will be used throughout the system. Once resources are scheduled or assigned, their capacity remains the same, but what is left over is available. Available hours = 40 hours minus 10% time for admin time, xx% time for tickets and yy% time for projects for each person.

By default, a user's capacity is eight hours per day, Monday – Friday, totaling forty hours per week. 

Three Views of Managing Resources

One: Reviewing Resources for Scheduling Project Requests

Once you estimate the resources needed on project requests at the functional role level, and after projects have resources scheduled within them, that data will be available inside Capacity Planner.

The Capacity Planner tool inside the Portfolio Planning application allows you to toggle different projects and project requests on or off during a determined span to see how the different resource needs interact with each other. For example, you might toggle off an existing project that could be put on hold to allow you to schedule two smaller projects that could provide more total value. The Capacity Planner tool breaks out the overall capacity by Functional Role, and then you can drill down to see what it does for each user's availability.

This could be most useful when you are reviewing or vetting these project requests but are not sure of the availability of needed resources. 

To initially set up and start using the Windows Budget and Capacity Planner.

Three times to plan resources:

• Project Requests: add resource roles and needed hours by month

  1. Open TDNext
  2. Click on the Analysis tab
  3. Select Portfolios from the left hand side
  4. Choose a portfolio 
  5. Click on Requests at the top of the page
  6. Choose a request
  7. On the left hand side select Role Forecasts
  8. Click on the Add Forecast
  9. Enter Hours, Functional Role and Named Resource.
  10. Click the green Generate button
  11. Select the green Save button 

Tip: Hours can be adjusted after the forecast has been generated.

• Approved Projects: staff project with specific resource name for initial forecast

Find Approved Project Request and Make it a Project 

• During the Planning Stage: Add specific date/ resource/ hours to tasks or card

How to Create a Cardwall Plan

Two: Reviewing Allocation Before Adding Resources to In-Progress Projects

In Resource Management, the four reports found in the Reports section can provide you with a month or week’s view of the schedule and availability for each user, functional role, or resource pool.

1. Open TDNext
2. Select the Resource Management tab
3. Under Standard Reports click on Availability Reports
4. Click on the green Run Report button
5. Select the drop down to group by Primary Functional Role or Reports To

Three: Managing Resource Requests for Users Inside Your Resource Pool

If the Resource Pool manager does not wish for a resource to be added to a project, they can deny the request or swap the requested resource out for another. The swapped resource can then be added to the project.

Resource Pool managers will see a Manage Allocations tab in the Resource Management application that provides granular control over where their users are allocated.

1. Open TDNext
2. Select the Resource Management tab
3. Under Standard Reports click on My Pending
4. Select the green Run Report button

Notes:  To see data in these reports, follow the next "how to" on key applications where the data must be entered.  To be effective, all projects staffed by a resource pool must be included before there is enough data to determine when a new project can be started for using that resource pool.

Key Applications

The resource management approaches depend on applications being completed outside of the Resource Management Application.

Workspaces - This is Used for Administrative Time and Tickets

Workspaces are for collaboration on project-like work, which allow you to account[plan?] for known changes in availability throughout the year. Workspaces can manage operational tasks such as maintenance on servers, routine tasks, and/or ticket work. After a user is added to a Workspace by the Workspace manager, a user can have their schedule set on a Workspace at the week or month level by the manager of the Workspace. That user's resource pool manager can set their schedule to a day level inside the Resource Management application.

For example, a user's schedule at an academic institution might need to be set to 80% unavailable in August. Returning students represent all the ticket work that needs to be completed. The user's schedule in June might be 90% open for project work since many students will be gone. Workspaces are where you can plan for known changes like these.

Each group in your organization might have their own Workspace to share ideas, store documents, and discuss items related to their areas of work. Time, Expenses, and Events can be tracked against Workspaces. Users can be added to a Workspace and have their schedule set by the Workspace manager.

Capacity Scheduling on Workspaces

Preparing Administrative and Ticket Time: - Needs to be updated

1. Open TDNext
2. Select the Projects/Workspaces tab
3. On the left side click Manage
4. Check the box for All
5. Select the green Actions button
6. Chose View Schedule

User Work Report:

1. Click on Analysis
2. Under Standard Reports select User Work Report
3. Enter the name of the user into the Search Bar
4. Select the green Run Report button

Projects

Projects are temporary and unique endeavors with defined deliverables, which makes them very different from Workspaces. A project manager needs to set the schedule for a resource on a project to represent the time that the user will spend on the project.

Working With Project Resources

It is important to know how many hours are being allocated towards projects. The "Scheduled Vs Actual Hours By Project" report can be ran to create a visual.

1. Click on Analysis
2. Under Standard Reports select Scheduled V Actual Hours By Project
3. Set To and From dates
4. On the right, enter the Acct/Dept, Functional Role, Person, Resource Pool or Project Type
5. Click on the green Run Report button.

The "Manager Analysis" report allows you view the status and health of projects.

1. Click on Analysis
2. Under Standard Reports select Manager Analysis
3. Select the time frame 
4. Search the Acct/Dept
5. Check the Acct/Dept you want to report
6. Click on the green Insert Checked button
7. Select the green Run Report button

Initial Staffing:

1. Navigate to TDNext > Portfolio Planning > Approved.
2. If necessary, change the search criteria and click the Search button.
3. Click the Name of the project request you’d like to staff.
4. In the Request Explorer window, click the Actions button, then select Staff from the dropdown.
5. Click the checkbox if you wish to have the resulting project to be active.
6. If desired, change the Start Date and End Date for the project.
7. Set the initial Status for the project.
8. Set the initial Health for the project.
9. If desired, assign the project to a Portfolio and/or Program by typing in the respective name or using the Lookup button.
10. To apply a Project Template, click the project template Lookup button, by typing in the name of the template or using the Lookup button.
11. Click the Next button.

To add resources or a manager:

1. Continuing from the project information page, the Resources page will display.
2. For each Role listed, add a resource by clicking the Lookup button in the Person column and selecting a user.
3. Make one resource the project manager by clicking the Manager radio button of the appropriate resource.
4. If no role forecasts were added to this request, assign a manager using the Manager lookup.
5. Click the Next button. 

Adding or Removing Resources:

1. Select the Projects/Workspaces tab
2. Choose the project you wish to add a resource to
3. On the left side, select Resource
4. Click the Actions button
5. Select Add Resource or Remove Resource

Tip: When removing resources, TeamDynamix will request the tasks from the removed resource be delegated to a new resource. Be sure to add a resource before removing one.

Card walls

Agile and hybrid projects use card walls, the first column on a card wall should include every deliverable required to complete the project. Each deliverable is written on a card. It is ok if the deliverable is large in size, frequently called an epic which will be broken down into smaller deliverables/tasks later in the project. The second column should contain everything planned to be accomplished in the current time period. In this time period x amount of deliverables will be worked. A deliverable is done if it has been moved into production and is being used by the end customer.  The third column contains everything planned to be accomplished in the next time period. The final column contains all of the deliverables that have been completed.

Adding Resources, Hours, and Dates to Cards:

1. Open up the project's cardwall or Click on the Plan, New button to start a new one.  One project may have several card walls.
2. Select the Edit button
3. Add the people Responsible
4. Enter start and end dates
5. Enter the estimated hours

Desktops

Several of the approaches above may added and viewed in your Resource Management Desktop, created to consolidate the information making it easy to read and access frequency.