Difference between hard booking and soft booking

[Anon Anon]

Hi,

What is excatly the difference between hard booking and soft booking of a resource in a project.

Regards,
Nagaraj

[Anon Anon]

In short : "hard" can be considered a confirmed booking, "soft" a tentative one.

Its more subtle that that, but thats the general idea.

Whether (functionally) you even need to think about hard/soft (and mixed) depends on YOUR organisations "resourcing model" - i.e. how YOUR organisation wants to add resources to projects - its all a functional discussion.

For example, you might let your Project Managers soft book resources to projects and only let you dedicated Resource Managers hard book them. (just an example).

Some more discussion here; 2294954

[Anon Anon]

Also, some portlets only show information if a resource is hard booked. (if I remember correctly)

[Deactivated User]

Mindy's excellent presentation explains the subtleties very clearly. The functionality is more than categorization and depends on who has the rights for hard and soft. Eventually with proper rights you can choose either values as the final booking.
The views/portlets are also in the presentation. The whiteboard helps to determine where the needs of your organization are.

Martti K.

[Legacy User]

In short, the difference between hard booking and soft booking of a resource in a project is the level of commitment. Hard booking indicates absolute commitment of the resource to the project, while soft indicates an initial assignment that has not been confirmed. There's a a third staffing option, mixed, indicating the requested and allocated amount don't currently agree.

Additional information regarding hard and soft booking as well as other resource management concepts can be found in the attached CA World 2011 presentation "Get Straight A's in Managing Resources Effectively" by Mindy Calderon.

Attachment(s)

Get Straight A in Managing Resources Effectively.pdf   1.76 MB 1 version