CA PPM Tech Tip: Role's Availability

[Legacy User]

For a generic role added to a project team, allocation can be set to represent role Demand and answer the question: “how many total hours are needed to do this job function for this investment?”

 

When it comes to availability of a generic role, since there are multiple actual resources in the system that can have the same role as their Primary Role, we are really looking for an answer to “who in the company can fill the role needed on the investment, and what are their availability”, rather than simply “who from the existing investment team has this role”.

 

In another word, a role’s availability is the aggregation from all named resources that have this role as their Primary Role. Therefore we would look for its information not in the “Resource Availability” field, but “Aggregated (Resource) Availability”. The word Aggregated would be a key indicator of whether information from a generic role will be included.

 

In this example, I have:

• Albus Dumbledore is a labor resource, his Primary Role is Architect, has 8 hours availability, no calendar exception.
• Architect is a generic labor role, has 6 hours availability, and for the week of January 25 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have been marked as non-work day. So for the week of January 25 2016 an Architect is available for 12 hours: 6 hours on Thursday and 6 hours on Friday.

 

On this project Albus Dumbledore is staffed but and we have changed his Investment Role to CEO.

 

 

On the project’s team detail page ‘Resource Availability’ is empty for the Architect role:

 

On the Team > Role Capacity page we have a field called Aggregated Availability:

 

Allocation for the Architect role comes from Architect staffed on the team: 6 hours on Thursday and 6 from Friday;

Aggregated Availability for the Architect role comes from entire PPM active resource pool: there are 3 active resources that have this role. Each of them has a normal 8 hours day, 40 hours week, aggregated up to 120 hours for the week.

(there is a 4th resource that has the Architect role, but is Inactive. Notice the Active filter above is set to Active)

 

Looking at Mr. Dumbledore’s contribution to the TSV, his allocation to the team is tied with his investment role of CEO, therefore his 40 hours of allocation on the team is shown with the role CEO. His availability to the entire organization is tied with his Primary Role of Architect, so his 40 hours availability is part of the 120 hours aggregated role availability along with two other resources.

 

It gets more interesting when we look at these information in a Portfolio, look for a future Tech Tip for that!

 

Big thanks to Kathryn_Ellis and Maria_Whiteside for collaborating on testing and a great discussion that prompted the creation of this Tech Tip!

[navzjoshi00]

Thanks for sharing this, Connie

 

Regards

NJ

[System]

Thanks for the tip Connie!

Connie Rong Fu wrote:

 

For a generic role added to a project team, allocation can be set to represent role Demand and answer the question: “how many total hours are needed to do this job function for this investment?”

 

When it comes to availability of a generic role, since there are multiple actual resources in the system that can have the same role as their Primary Role, we are really looking for an answer to “who in the company can fill the role needed on the investment, and what are their availability”, rather than simply “who from the existing investment team has this role”.

 

In another word, a role’s availability is the aggregation from all named resources that have this role as their Primary Role. Therefore we would look for its information not in the “Resource Availability” field, but “Aggregated (Resource) Availability”. The word Aggregated would be a key indicator of whether information from a generic role will be included.

 

In this example, I have:

• Albus Dumbledore is a labor resource, his Primary Role is Architect, has 8 hours availability, no calendar exception.
• Architect is a generic labor role, has 6 hours availability, and for the week of January 25 Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday have been marked as non-work day. So for the week of January 25 2016 an Architect is available for 12 hours: 6 hours on Thursday and 6 hours on Friday.

 

On this project Albus Dumbledore is staffed but and we have changed his Investment Role to CEO.

 

 

On the project’s team detail page ‘Resource Availability’ is empty for the Architect role:

 

On the Team > Role Capacity page we have a field called Aggregated Availability:

 

Allocation for the Architect role comes from Architect staffed on the team: 6 hours on Thursday and 6 from Friday;

Aggregated Availability for the Architect role comes from entire PPM active resource pool: there are 3 active resources that have this role. Each of them has a normal 8 hours day, 40 hours week, aggregated up to 120 hours for the week.

(there is a 4th resource that has the Architect role, but is Inactive. Notice the Active filter above is set to Active)

 

Looking at Mr. Dumbledore’s contribution to the TSV, his allocation to the team is tied with his investment role of CEO, therefore his 40 hours of allocation on the team is shown with the role CEO. His availability to the entire organization is tied with his Primary Role of Architect, so his 40 hours availability is part of the 120 hours aggregated role availability along with two other resources.

 

It gets more interesting when we look at these information in a Portfolio, look for a future Tech Tip for that!

 

Big thanks to Kathryn_Ellis and Maria_Whiteside for collaborating on testing and a great discussion that prompted the creation of this Tech Tip!

[Legacy User]

Hi Connie,

 

Two points:

 

1. Clarification question:  Where did the Aggregated Availability of 40 hrs come from for the CEO role?
   1. The scenario describes 4 resources, all architects, but one is inactive.  I except that there must be at least one other active resource, one with the primary role of CEO.
   2. Correct?  My testing appears to back this up - aggregate availability doesn't increase for a given primary role, when allocating someone with a different role to the team role.  Otherwise, if allocating a primary role architect to a team role CEO somehow creates 40 hours of availability for CEO role and doesn't decrement 40 hrs from the architect pool, there'd be double counting - and a means of increasing capacity without hiring any more people.  Cool!
   3. One thing this Role Capacity screen doesn't indicate is that the 40 hours of CEO allocation is being fulfilled by someone other than the CEO.  The Architect pool is filling 52 hours of allocation demand (12 hours as Architect and 40 as CEO) and the CEO pool is filling zero hours of allocation demand.  Am I missing something?
2. Problem:  On our Team-Role-Capacity screens, the Allocation values are all Null - weekly, monthly, doesn't matter.
   1. Checked timeslice settings - all are set to cover the periods displayed.
   2. Investment Allocation job is running successfully.
   3. Is there a slice that this page uses that perhaps we don't have set up?  Some other root cause?

 

Ok- ready to be re-educated.  We don't use these screens, today - but we have groups starting to pilot capacity/demand management (Yippee!).  Your posting intrigued me and I need to stay ahead of these increasingly ambitious groups!

[Legacy User]

I can't find the server where I did this test on, searched the frequently used servers but Dumbledore is no where to be found!

 

My memory tells me that I had another resource having a primary role as the CEO (it wasn't Voldemore).

 

SO I did a new test, and I can confirm that double counting is not happening here. In today's test I have nobody with a primary role of CEO, CEO is showing blank 'Aggregated Availability'.

 

AND I ran into a blank Allocation display too, ran jobs, checked my slices, etc, and of course it was because my project is not 'Approved' in the Status field .

[Andrew M]

In some organisations it may be appropriate to have a rule that resources only work their primary role.

I.e. have a process that will change it back if set incorrectly.

 

This avoids the situation at the end of the tip and other financial problems.