Overview of Using Resource Management for Capacity Planning

Resource capacity planning consists of the following activities:

  • Gauging present resource capacity and workload

  • Predicting future resource capacity in terms of needed roles or resources

  • Forecasting future resource demand in terms of needed roles or resources

  • Viewing historical trends in resource allocation

  • Comparing present resource usage to previous forecasts

Resource Management includes two basic tools to help in resource capacity planning:

  • Staffing profiles. Staffing profiles allow a manager to plan the future allocation of resources, broken down by role. This lets the business see what kinds of resources and roles they will need for future work.

  • Resource pools. Resource pools provide a way to track future resource capacity, broken down by role. This lets the resource manager see what resources and roles will be available to apply to future work.

Staffing profiles and resource pools integrate to form an end-to-end resource management process:

  1. Resource managers create resource pools that define resource capacity. See Planning Capacity with Resource Pools for details on creating resource pools.

  2. Project managers create staffing profiles that forecast resource demand. See Track demand with staffing profiles for details on staffing profile usage and creation.

  3. These staffing profiles spawn resource requests meant for various resource pools. See Send resource requests from a staffing profile for details on resource requests.

    Staffing Profile managers can manage positions and assignments for the projects he owns using the Forecast Planning page. See Forecast Planning for details on the Forecast Planning page.

  4. Resource managers fill resource requests by drawing from the specified resource pools to make the actual resource allocations to the originating staffing profiles. See Assign resource pool resources, Adjusting Resource Participation Within Resource Pools, and Assign resources to resource requests from Resource Allocation Management page for details on making assignments to staffing profiles from resource pools.

    Resource managers can also forward requests to another resource pool, or reject resource requests altogether. See Rejecting and Forwarding Demand, Forwarding a Resource Request from Resource Allocation Management Page, and Rejecting a Resource Request from Resource Allocation Management Page for details on forwarding and rejecting resource requests.

    Resource managers can load balance resources from their pools across the staffing profiles requesting resources. They can also examine the utilization of resources on projects. See Analyzing Staffing Profiles Associated with Projects and Analyze resource pools for details on this process.