Clarity

Hi Everyone,

I am wondering if you can make the Staff OBS unit field required when a PM adds a role. We have some processes which update the requirement name based on a naming convention we decided but if the PM leaves the Staff OBS blank the record or records will not be updated. Has anyone made the Staff OBS unit required in their organization?

Thanks
Tammi

Great business problem to solve Tammi. With our push into Resource Planning I can see this coming at us as well. 

We're building out Demand in Ideas for better forecasting & scheduling. We've implemented an Idea Template Framework to provide a 'one click' experience to stamping on a Team load of Roles, Allocations & Staff OBSes. I see that's a Project above - build out standardized 'Forecast load' Project templates and train users to leverage templates more?

I also dream of a Resource Requirements Library where we can provide an menu of Requirements so to speak that a user scoping a project could pick from and it would automagically apply Role, Skill, Staff OBS and standardized Requirement Name (<-- sound like you're doing today!)

I jumped in and tried. I've come up with nothing so far that won't cause more harm than good. Now that you've put this in the back of my head - I'll keep noodling. Maybe something'll pop up.

Hi Tammi, we have leveraged the Staff OBS for our investment team plans for a specific purpose - with drawbacks.

It is mandatory to select the Staff OBS for Roles on the team plan as this is how we have refined the selection of the rate. The OBS hierarchy for this purpose is the 'Location OBS' where we have facilitated the selection of a normal or higher rate based on the 'Location OBS' selection. i.e. Business Analyst (role) with a 'Staff OBS' selection of "Australia / Sydney / Perm" gives the equivalent rate of an employee for a BA, but if the 'Staff OBS' selection is "Australia / Sydney / Flex" then the rate that is selected is 140% of an equivalent employee - or what we would pay for a contractor on average. The lack of selection on this front impedes the ability to create a cost plan from investment team - because we have not defined a rate for role by itself.

The big drawback for us with this approach, and it was known when I presented this design to my stakeholders, is that the I can't additionally select the standard OBS units that are mapped against "warm bodies". So I can't see the roles in any of the team utilisation reports (the standard reports). Particularly when we acknowledge that approve roles to hire are effectively treated as "warm bodies" (as opposed to the "cold bodies" that my former PM used to reference - insert bad joke) for managing a team.

What I would like to see functionally is the extension of all the OBS options against a team plan - I don't know whether this is possible. Because the Staff OBS limits the team plan OBS selection to only one value.

From a configuration perspective we have not made the field conditionally mandatory based on a role being selected (I am not sure this is possible).

Hi Chris and Rob,

It is good to hear your struggles and come up with enhancements which would work for your organization and possibly others. Our issue is if we don't make it mandatory and we allow Project Managers to add roles they may not associate the role to any OBS which would result in incorrect reports to Senior Management or our Portfolio meetings especially if we need to see Demand for a Department or a priority of projects. I tried to see if we can make the field mandatory  but I am unable to do so on via the Team tab list, I don't think you can. I see the ability in the team object to make it a required field but no such luck when checking it. 

Rob I like your Idea Template Framework, I am wondering if I can use it for projects since we aren't using Ideas as I would like us too. We tag one of our phases of a project as Pipeline and opposed to using Ideas and converting the Pipeline project to a project once we are ready for Scoping.

Chris out of curiosity if you added one role how many OBS would you have to map it too? 2? 

Thanks

Tammi 

Tammi, unfortunately there are two choices for Roles and OBS - and both have limitations. We took the guiding principle of keeping the job family framework (roles) down to the minimum number - in order to ensure that any PM in charge of a piece of work should be able to forecast in a consistent and logical way what roles are required to deliver (this was based on experience on my first Clarity install over 10 years ago where my company lost complete control of the roles and ended up defining over 630 roles).

So the choices were:

1. Each role would be defined by business unit (i.e. OBS) with a rate specifically tied into that role's associated resource financial properties

2. Have a limited set of roles, one instance only, and then use the 'Staff OBS' as the delineator to point to the right rate.

We obviously chose option 2 based on our design principle, but Option 1 that you highlighted would enable you to define multiple OBS units in exactly the same way you would for named labour resources.

If your organisation is structurally simple (from an org chart / department perspective) then you would be able to keep a bottle on the number of roles for option 1. Unfortunately for us our structure is complex with over 11 technology delivery divisions, the same roles sitting in all units (i.e. our departments are not functionally aligned - but customer aligned), and a propensity to have an org restructure every 6-12 months in response to rapidly changing business customer demand.

We've looked at this capability, on and off (mostly off ).  Our idea has been to use Role with Department OBS in the Staff OBS field, as our rates are department based.  Have not considered trying to make Staff OBS mandatory - I don't expect there's a way to make this work, out of the box, as list views ignore 'required' settings.  Also, would like to limit the OBS Types that user can select - since our Rates are Department based, if they select another OBS Type, building a Cost Plan will fail with that entirely frustrating error message that 'Rate could not be found..."

Our idea has been to provide templates that user would select from, where WBS, roles and Staff OBS, are defined, including assignments.  Yes, user can modify, but would be starting with most of the work done.

Appears to work ok for us - but we'd like to include "Resource Type" (e.g. Employee, Contractor, Student...) in the Team Staff page, Rate Matrix and jobs which produce Cost Plans.  Can only be done with a workaround - having a job populate Transaction Class with contents of Resource Type....

Oh, and we'd like to have:

- ability to plan in local currency within one Entity (yes, we could have implemented one entity/currency, but we were advised against this)

- ability to change Fiscal Periods (we've been bought, will need to change to new owner's fiscal calendar)

- ability to change Entity currency (need to switch from USD to EUR)

- and if we must go to multiple Entities, or create a new, Euro based entity, an ability to move in-flight projects between entities (currently, must close projects on old entity/currency, reopen as new projects on new entity, with no means to move risks, issues, docs, etc. from old project to new project)

- ability to have more detail in cost plan (e.g. "Equipment" is insufficient - what equipment are you buying?)

- financial metrics include Revenue entered on Cost Plan (currently, Revenue on Cost Plan is ignored; only Revenue entered on Benefit Plan is considered - this is insufficient for us, as our Revenue is based on counst of parts sold, where counts can't be entered on Benefit Plan)

- an ability to batch adjust transactions (have requirement to update actual cost rate after the end of each month and apply the update to the month's transactions)

I've seen one company workaround many of these issues, rather skillfully - think this should be out of the box capability if selling app to global customers.

Thanks everyone!!