Track demand with staffing profiles

Staffing profiles enable a project manager to track the forecast demand of resources.

Overview of staffing profiles

Project managers can use staffing profiles to track the forecast demand of resources, arranged by role.

Each line in a staffing profile tracks the FTE, hours, or person days forecast for a role, and, optionally, a resource who possesses that role assigned to the position.
You can select the time period breakdown such as Weeks, Months, Quarters, and Years when entering or viewing the resource forecast.

When project managers finish making the resource usage forecasts, they send the forecasts to resource managers as resource requests. Resource managers receive these resource requests and proceed with the relevant resource pool to begin making assignments. Resource pool managers can assign one or more resources to these positions to fulfill the unmet demands by using the Assign or Resource Finder function. The Staffing Profile page reloads with user's changes made. If unmet demand remains, resource pool managers can repeat the assignment process as needed.

Recommendations for using staffing profiles to track forecast demand

We have the following recommendations for project managers when using staffing profiles to track forecast demand:

From a high-level planning for the long cycle, it is recommended to use a staffing profile which represents the workload imposed by the project. At this phase, a rough estimation from an FTEs level is sufficient for both project managers and resource pool managers to have an overall understanding of resource demand.
When the project turns to the execution phase, project managers then use project work plan to breakdown the work to pieces of tasks and assign the resource at an accurate (hours) level. At this phase, we recommend project managers track the forecast demand using the Hours view. When switching to this view, managers can see more detailed and accurate data. For example, for an allocated position which requires 40 hours in a week, project managers may have concerns such as whether the assigned engineer is available during this period and will the assigned engineer take a vacation during this period? If so, project managers need to request other resources to fulfill the unmet gap.
For large projects, it is recommended that project managers and resource pool managers use staffing profile in the FTE view. This view enables the project managers to have a big picture when plan and schedule the project, without concerning small deviations such as holidays and personal leaves.
For small projects whose work plan is fully defined and scheduled, it is recommended to use the Hours view which provides more accurate data.
Typically, we recommend that you plan resources and make assignments in the same view (FTE or hours). For examples about FTE view and hours view, see Unmet demand calculation sample scenarios.

Control period type and effort type

The display settings of the period type and effort type are controlled by the following parameters in the server.conf file:

com.kintana.core.server.RM_DEFAULT_EFFORT_TYPE=fte
com.kintana.core.server.RM_DEFAULT_PERIOD_TYPE=month
com.kintana.core.server.RM_ALLOWED_EFFORT_TYPES=fte,person_days,hours

For details, see Server parameters.

Use staffing profile regional calendar to calculate demand in the FTE unit

By default, PPM calculates demand in the FTE unit based on the resource pool's regional calendar. If the Use Staffing Profile Regional Calendar When Converting Demand Effort feature toggle is turned on, PPM calculates the demand in the FTE unit based on the staffing profile's regional calendar. For details, see Use feature toggles to turn on/off features.

Note:

This is a Beta feature. It is available in PPM 10.0.1 and later versions.
Using this feature requires extra steps to update the database. If you want to enable this feature, contact support for details.

Staffing profile features

Staffing profiles include some features that make them simpler to use: