Tips on Running the CSP Capacity vs. Demand Reports

[Walter Angus]

The Capacity vs. Demand by Role, Resource and OBS reports are excellent reports for those looking to understand resource capacity vs. demand.  These reports have been successfully used for short and long term planning and understanding resource project demand as measured against their capacity over time.  Using these reports will help you to successfully plan the mix of projects and timing over your planning horizon.  

There are a number of prerequisites for each of these reports that must be fulfilled to run these reports or you will get the message “There are no results that match your criteria”.  The attached document will provide you with some tips to help you resolve this issue and run these reports successfully.

Attachment(s)

Tips on Running the Capacity vs Demand.docx   112 KB 1 version

[Anon Anon]

I had asked Walt to share this with the community because it has come up in conversations with a few of his customers and I thought that the community may find it helpful.  Below is the contents of his attachment:

In many IT organizations the primary limiting factors to what can be accomplished in a fiscal period are funding and resource capacity, neither of which are controlled by most IT resource managers. Most IT resource managers have a budget provided to them and a fixed number of resources and/or contractors available to them. As a result of this the IT resource manager must pay special attention to the capacity of their team and the demands placed on them.  In this article we are going to focus on the running of two excellent reports that provide visibility into role and resource capacity vs. demand.   The reports are part of the CA Clarity PPM Solution Pack and are: Capacity vs. Demand by Role and Capacity vs. Demand by Resource.  

Capacity vs. Demand by Role:

The Capacity vs. Demand by Role report (Figure 1) displays capacity, demand and remaining capacity by role across investments for a specified period of time.  Amounts may be displayed by week or month by FTE or hours.  This report has is often used as a near term and long term planning tool by many organizations.  Recently, an organization used this to report to validate their FY14 plan from a project and resource perspective. They did this by entering the planned projects into CA Clarity, allocated roles to those projects over time and then ran the report to see where they would have shortages and excesses of resources.  By balancing the projects and resources over time with visibility into capacity vs. demand they successfully planned and scheduled projects for the upcoming fiscal year.

Figure 1:  Capacity vs. Demand by Role

 

Capacity vs. Demand by Resource:

The Capacity vs. Demand by Resource report (Figure 2) displays the total capacity vs. demand and the variance for named resources.  This report not only includes resource totals but also the allocations to individual projects.  Amounts may be displayed by week or month by FTE or hours.  The report will display up 12 periods of months or weeks.  This report is designed to support the needs a resource manager both in the short term, weeks and longer term view of months.   

Figure 2:  Capacity vs. Demand By Resource Report

 

Running of these reports:

Running these reports requires specific attention to the prerequisites and report parameters as identified in the Solution Pack Product Guide document that can be found on the CA Support Website.  

The prerequisites depend on the report parameters selected when running the report.  The key prerequisites include but are not limited to:

• Resources must have a primary role defined on their resource record
• Resource availability must be defined on their resource record
• Resources must be allocated to at least one investment
• To display resource assigned hours the resource must be assigned to at least one task
• Weekly time slices must be setup and populated
• Monthly time slices must be setup and populated
• The job “Update Business Object Report Tables” must be run with the “update reporting calendar” option checked

When the Report Returns no Results:

If one of these reports is successfully run and the results is that no data is selected as shown in Figure 3, there are a number of things that you should check.  

Figure 3:  Report results failure

Report Parameters: (if using)

1. General:
   1. Use of multiple report parameters can create a mutually exclusive situation where data will not be returned. An example of this would be using the Resource OBS parameter and also a resource manager that does not have any resources in the selected OBS.
2. Resource OBS:
   1. Check the Resource OBS to make sure it is the correct one
   2. Validate that the resources have the Resource OBS assigned on their record
3. Resource Manager:
   1. Resource manager vs booking manager could be mutually exclusive.
   2. Validate the resource manager field is populated on the resource record
   3. Validate the booking manager is populated on the resource record
4. Booking Manager:
   1. Resource manager vs booking manager could be mutually exclusive
   2. Validate the booking manager field is populated on the resource record or role record.
5. Resource Role:
   1. Resources must have an assigned primary role and have capacity
   2. If a role is selected that is not staffed you must check the “Show Roles with No Capacity” to include roles with zero capacity.  Also check the “Include UnStaffed Roles”
6. Resource (Capacity vs Demand by Resource report only)
   1. Validate any other parameters selected are valid for the resource.
7. Start Date:
   1. If no results are returned and the other parameters are correct validate that the correct Time Slices cover the time period you are selecting.
8. Period Type:
   1. The type of data, monthly or weekly is driven from the time slice tables, if the time slices are not setup properly or don’t cover the time period the report will not return data.

 

Time Slice Setup: 

1. Monthly Time Slice setup:  (Administration => Time Slices)
   1. Start Date:   Must be the 1st calendar day of the month
   2. The time period must cover the start date selected in the report
   3. Monthly Slices:
      1. MONTHLYRESOURCEACTCURVE (ID=4)
      2. MONTHLYRESOURCEESTCURVE (ID=5)
      3. MONTHLYRESOURCEALLOCCURVE (ID=6)
      4. MONTHLYRESOURCEAVAILCURVE (ID=7)
2. Weekly Time Slice Setup:  (Administration => Time Slices)
   1. Start Date:  Any date can be selected but it MUST be the first day of the work week as defined in Clarity -  Administration => Settings => “First Day of the Work Week”
   2. The time period must cover the start date selected in the report
   3. Weekly Slices Used:
   4. WEEKLYRESOURCEACTCURVE (ID=55556)
   5. WEEKLYRESOURCEESTCURVE (ID=55557)
   6. WEEKLYRESOURCEALLOCCURVE (ID=55558)
   7. WEEKLYRESOURCEAVAILCURVE (ID=55559)

Summary:

 

The Capacity vs. Demand by Role and Resource reports can be a valuable tool in the toolkit of an IT organization.  These reports clearly identify resource demand vs. capacity over time and provide information for planning and staffing projects.  An organization can use this information to identify staffing needs such as when they may need some consulting support or conversely, when they can release some consultants.  The key to the value of these reports is having accurate resource or role allocations on your projects that reflect when you need that type of resource on that project.  Once you have this data these reports will be invaluable.