Capacity planning by role

[Scott]

Does anyone have any recommendations for doing capacity planning by role -
DBA, Dev, QA, etc in EPM 2007?

I was hoping to identify roles and then allocate capacity based on the
number of people that fulfill that role. I was thinking that generic
resources might be the way to go but then realized that the capacity could
only be set via the calendar setting.

Perhaps positons has something to do with this but then again they appear to
be attributes of resource - nothing more than that.

Any suggestions? - Thanks in advance.

 

[Paul Conroy]

Create a resource based custom field to identify the role of each resource.

By adding this field to the OLAP cube you will be able to slice and dice
resource work/capacity/availability within the Data Analysis views or
Reporting Services.

HTH

 

[Scott]

Thanks Paul,

I was hoping to be able to leverage this data prior to starting a project.
For example, early fiscal planning where you know you'll need 10 fte's of a
dev resource, 5 ftes of QA, etc and you want to compare that FTE level
planning against other competing projects. Sounds like you are suggesting to
do this outside of EPM and building some kind of report to model it. That
may be fine, but just interested in whether EPM has this capability that can
already be leveraged via configuration and without having to build something
- and perhaps I just am missing something.

 

[Paul Conroy]

You can do exactly this by using resource plans within proposals.

Here's a few links to get you on your way:-

http://blogs.msdn.com/project/archive/2007/02/21/resource-plans-explained-i-hope.aspx
http://www.mympa.org/projectnetwork/080221a.aspx

 

[Scott]

Thanks Paul - I really appreciate your help -especially at the late hour.

I checked in to resource plans but isn't capacity based on a calendar -
meaning you have a limit of 3 ftes / day?

 

[Paul Conroy]

You can change the value of FTE under server settings/additional server
settings.

At the beginning of you planning period enter your proposals into PWA and
resource requirements as resource plans. Use generic resources at this
stage. Be careful to select the correct resource utilisation option
(resource plan, project plan, or mixture). Remember to publish both the
proposed project plan and resource plan.

Once you've entered and published your proposed project and resource
requirements, you can use the Resource Centre, Data Analysis Views and
Reporting Services to ascertain demand and capacity. Remember to include
"Proposed Work" when working in these views\reports.

HTH

 

[Paul Conroy]

I forgot to mention that increasing the max units of your generic resources
to reflect your capacity will also help. Ie if you have 6 Infrastructure
Architects, set the max units of the associated generic resource to 600%

 

[Scott]

Where do you set the unit's so that they can be leveraged for the enterprise?
I thought units were specified on a per project basis.

I looked in the resource center and the only thing that appears to have
relevance to capacity is the calendar setting option.

 

[Scott]

Ah - figured it out. You need to define the position roles and have both
named and generics mapped in to the position role. The number of resources
that map in to the role will provide the capacity for the generic.