Methods other than Resource Calendars and Non-Workdays

[Legacy User]

Does anyone NOT use the resource calendars and the associated non-workday feature in Clarity? If yes, how do you manage time off in Clarity?

By way of background, we are interested in hearing your input as we have been advised by a consultant to remove all “Non-Working" time from the Clarity Resource Calendars and to use Other Work Tasks instead of indirect rows to track time off.

It appears that upon initial setup the NW “Other Work” tasks would be defaulted to 0% allocation and hard booked. Subsequently all planned time off would be put into planned allocation segments and then hard booked when approved. (If the time off was short notice (ad hoc) or short duration, the time off would be monitored using actuals only.) Next the RMs would be responsible to see that all allocations to the various projects and NPIOs would be adjusted for each block of known and approved time off. When the time off is posted, the corresponding actuals would appear on Resource Allocation – Detail Screen. Does anyone actually use this method? In your opinion, what are the benefits and disadvantages of making such a move?

[lmatzerath]

We commonly only use the calenders for resource set up initially. But work with other work to manage and plan time off and other not project related work.

Let me know if you like further details . ..

[Legacy User]

Yes.  I would be interested in further details.  Thanks.

[lmatzerath]

Just send me a privat message and I'll send you more details.
[e-mail]

[Legacy User]

I've sent you a private message.  Thanks.

[Aditya Angrish]

This is a valid approach.

Especially, with 15.1 and the new timesheets UX that no longer allows indirect time.

 

Additionally, with the new Timesheet UI, you get the see Project v/s non project time, so you get a quick view of how much time in a  week was spent on no-project activities (not all of these are vacation)

 

Disadvantage is that you are now maintaining an additional Object (Other Work)

 

Do understand that when you move from non-work days on the calendar to Other Work, your capacity is going to increase. Granted, it will be consumed by 'Other Work' demand, but if you are looking closely at capacity, you may need to account for this increase in user training/reports etc.

[David Morton]

Not sure that there is ever going to be a "right answer" to this, but some previous discussions about handling non-project time (that you still are interested in) would be things like this ;

 

Is there a way to modify "Working/Non Working Days"? 

All resources should be able to report time against a defined subset of projects. How? 

TimeSheet on vacation resources 

 

Personally worked with that "holiday project" system and it works - the main problem with it was when trying to do any automatic-resource-based-scheduling as you need include details of a resource's non-availability in the problem that the scheduler is trying to solve (so project's tended to have a project-specific non-availaibility calendar that they could then pull into OWB alongside the project that they were scheduling).

[Robert_Ensinger]

David Morton wrote:

 

Not sure that there is ever going to be a "right answer" to this

But that's what's sad, right? Other vendors are preaching 'Total Work Management' with the facilities to handle this while we've all been inventing/faking this in CA PPM by hook & crook (We do team level out of office projects). We need Resource Management 2.0 - a Simple, Work Centric approach to Resource Management that has all the hooks (eg: automagically feeds into resource calendars for more accurate scheduling & capacity forecasting), best practices and necessary tools (templates, wizards) out of the box for organizations (who wish to track time) to easily manage all time.

 

We need a right answer to this.

[lmatzerath]

Rob, I agree , but... because CA PPM is not the everyday platform for people to go to and do their job, they commonly don't know how to or where to change their settings/calenders etc. So for managers to go into CA PPM and set allocation on a monthly or even weekly basis for services, apps, other works etc. its usually a once in a quarter or month activitiy and not seriously practiced... because what are the consequences?

 

I have found that even though many other providers preach that they have the "Everything Wollmilchsau" (sorry for my German analogy) - the companies applying such work management styles often fail in the same area as a tool that does not cope with this practice as easily or as nicely...

 

So in my eyes it always comes back to implementing the right things and getting people to do them. Which is a lot of work...

But never the less I'd love to have the state of the art version as well as anybody else in this community rather then what we currently have...

[Robert_Ensinger]

I believe in the Wollmilchsau! Is it also known as Reinventing Resource Management?

 

We can do this.

[Legacy User]

Amen.

 

Wouldn't it be great if user could enter their planned vacation days in Outlook, have this show up in CA PPM as 'not available' and be there on their timesheet when they are ready to book actual hours?  Oh, and maybe include an optional approval process for the resource manager, possibly project managers, to accept the vacation request?

 

We are moving off Indirect time entry to Other Work.  Other Work has its pros and cons -

 

• Pros:  The ability to allocate, cost plan, set security access (we can't use some 'indirect' topics in some countries due to their local privacy laws).
• Cons:  Additional administrative overhead to manage (allocate resources to Other Work Team\Staff pages, replicating Other Work instances by BU, product group, so that each can manage differences between the groups and not have all 7000 users on Team\Staff page of one instance,...)

 

But staying with Indirect really isn't an option:  It's data architecture is 16+ years old, indirect hours are not being ported to the Jaspersoft DWH, and it appears that 15.1 doesn't have a means of enabling Indirect on timesheets. 

 

I'm looking at a sandbox, now, and though 15.1 docs talk about being able to see Indirect when accessing timesheets through the new "My Timesheets" (classic) portlet, I'm not seeing any means for adding Indirect to my timesheet.  Also, I don't see any means for enabling/disabling indirect on the Admin side of 15.1.  It may be, that if one upgrades an existing data set where indirect is used, 15.1 will enable you to continue using it on classic timesheet view.  But if starting with new data set, perhaps CA's intention is that new customers won't be able to initiate Indirect - CA is weaning everyone off the old, indirect data architecture (and some might say "Finally!"). 

 

"Other Work" is the way forward - it's not Resource Management 2.0, but there's no other option - "Indirect" has a signed DNR in effect.