Representing new, open positions in EPM 2003 for resource planning

[Irish Gues]

Hi,

We have several new positions available that won't be filled for a few
months. We are attempting to introduce a 12-month rolling resource plan using
our data in EPM. We enter all of our projects into the system, make our best
guesses on who will be working on what project with a general timeframe and
work effort. We do assign our enterprise resources on the task level and
leave the resources as proposed.

What is the best way to represent these new hires in the system so we can
assign them to projects for resource planning? Should they just be generic
resources or local resources or something else?

Thanks!

 

[Dale Howard [MVP]]

Irish --

If it were me, I would use a Generic resource called something like New Hire
and set the Max. Units value to 100% multiplied by the number of new people
you are planning to hire. I would set the start of their Availability to
the date they will be hired (you do this by double-clicking the name of the
resource and setting this information in the bottom of the General tab).
That's my opinion. Perhaps others have an idea for you as well. Hope this
helps.

 

[Larry Christofaro]

Irish,
I like Dale's solution as well. One more option if you are already using
generic resources is to increase the units of the existing generic resource
that reflects the role you are hiring. I tend to initially set generic
resources to 0 max units so that they don't reflect unavailable capacity.
Then when you have a hire pending, increase the units for that generic
resource role per Dale's instructions.