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One major task when doing project planning is a proper staffing. In this blog we would like to provide you with a how-to-guide that helps you build a report that supports you in achieving your goal.
You will be able to answer questions such as:
Let us start with the current ‘Team and Staffing’ view of a project:
Here, the system already provides you with information like:
However, doing resource management additional aspects need to be considered, like:
To answer such questions we will combine information from two data sources:
The first data source is needed to get an overview of all planned and already staffed project tasks and services, while the second data source provides us with information about the commitment situation.
Since we want the report to also show data for project tasks and services, where no project team member is yet assigned, we need to create a left outer join of both data sources, with PROPRJU05 being the leading data source: The join could look as follows, where the project and the team member (called service responsible in PROPRJU05) is used to join both data sources:
As a next step we create a new key figure, which will show the difference between planned and committed hours per team member. In our example we decided to subtract committed hours from planned hours. As a basis we use the newly defined data source.
Since we only want this new key figure to be calculated for result rows we set ‘Calculate Single Value As:’ to ‘Hide’.
There is still another step to be done, because our data source PROPRJU05 also includes baseline and snapshot data. To avoid having some values counted twice we need to ignore data from project baseline and snapshot.
This can be done during report definition.
We now create a new report based on our joined data source:
Include the new calculated key figure in the report:
Select characteristics:
Define appropriate value selections, e.g. for company, project etc..
As you can see we use a fixed value selection for the source of data. By clicking on ‘Set Fixed Value Selections’ you can select from various sources of data. This is exactly the place where we ignore the source data for baseline and snapshot. Since we only want to deal with services we only select the following two sources:
We finish by defining a set of variables, e.g.:
As a last step we define a view and a selection and added some result rows and some fancy traffic lights indicating potential issues.
In the first report view we put the project as first characteristics.
What can you learn from the report?
Of course you can also put the team member to the first column to have a more employee-focused evaluation of the cross-project staffing situation:
We hope this helps.
Otfried and stefan.resag
You will be able to answer questions such as:
- Are there any team members that have more planned than committed hours in a dedicated project?.
- Are there any planned services that yet need to be staffed?
- Overall per project, is there more planned work that committed work?
- Is there sufficient staffing for a number of selected projects?
Let us start with the current ‘Team and Staffing’ view of a project:
Here, the system already provides you with information like:
- Which team members are planned on my project?
- How many hours are committed for each team member?
- How many hours are already planned for each team member and what is the delta between planned and committed hours?
However, doing resource management additional aspects need to be considered, like:
- For a dedicated project, is there more planned than committed work independently of the team member? If yes, additional staffing is needed.
- For a dedicated project, are there any planned services, which need to be staffed and do I still have team members with more committed than planned hours?
- Are there projects, where there is more commitment than planned work, so that I might be able to shift resources?
To answer such questions we will combine information from two data sources:
- PROPRJU05 - Projects, Baselines, and Snapshots
- PROPPAB - Project Team Member
The first data source is needed to get an overview of all planned and already staffed project tasks and services, while the second data source provides us with information about the commitment situation.
Since we want the report to also show data for project tasks and services, where no project team member is yet assigned, we need to create a left outer join of both data sources, with PROPRJU05 being the leading data source: The join could look as follows, where the project and the team member (called service responsible in PROPRJU05) is used to join both data sources:
As a next step we create a new key figure, which will show the difference between planned and committed hours per team member. In our example we decided to subtract committed hours from planned hours. As a basis we use the newly defined data source.
Since we only want this new key figure to be calculated for result rows we set ‘Calculate Single Value As:’ to ‘Hide’.
There is still another step to be done, because our data source PROPRJU05 also includes baseline and snapshot data. To avoid having some values counted twice we need to ignore data from project baseline and snapshot.
This can be done during report definition.
We now create a new report based on our joined data source:
Include the new calculated key figure in the report:
Select characteristics:
Define appropriate value selections, e.g. for company, project etc..
As you can see we use a fixed value selection for the source of data. By clicking on ‘Set Fixed Value Selections’ you can select from various sources of data. This is exactly the place where we ignore the source data for baseline and snapshot. Since we only want to deal with services we only select the following two sources:
- 12 = ‘Project Task Service’
- 15 = ‘Project Participant’
We finish by defining a set of variables, e.g.:
As a last step we define a view and a selection and added some result rows and some fancy traffic lights indicating potential issues.
In the first report view we put the project as first characteristics.
What can you learn from the report?
- Are there any team members that have more planned than committed hours in a dedicated project?
- In our example this is Otfried in project SR_CPSO_01.
- Are there any planned services that yet need to be staffed?
- Look at all the services in project SR_CPSO_01 where a team member is not assigned.
- Overall per project, is there more planned work that committed work?
- Yes, because for project SR_CPSO_01 300 hours are committed, but 358 hours are planned. So a resource manager needs to do staffing of additional 58 hours.
- For all projects in your selection, is there sufficient staffing?
- In our example both projects together can be covered by the committed hours, but some shift from SR_CPSO-01 to SR_CPSO_02 needs to be done.
Of course you can also put the team member to the first column to have a more employee-focused evaluation of the cross-project staffing situation:
We hope this helps.
Otfried and stefan.resag
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