Clarity

  • 1.  CA PPM Tuesday Tip: Can baseline information be retained when replacing a role with a resource?

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Feb 17, 2015 02:59 PM

    Are you looking for a way to replace a role with a resource without losing baseline information?

     

    While in Clarity, as per design, baseline information is not retained when you replace a role with a resource, the good news is that you can use Open Workbench’s (OWB’s) transfer assignment feature to keep baseline information. The key is to ensure that the “Keep Baselines” check box is checked.

     

    To utilize the feature in OWB:

    1)    Open the project schedule in OWB.

    2)    Click the Project tab and then click the Transfer icon in the top menu.

    3)    Select the desired roles/resources in the “Transfer assignments from this resource” and “to this resource” drop downs.  

    4)    Important: Before moving the tasks to be reassigned, make sure to check the “Keep Baselines” check box.

    5)    Highlight the tasks you want to have reassigned in the left column, then click the arrow to click the right arrow to move the tasks to the new resource.

    6)    Click OK.

    7)    Save the OWB Schedule and you will see in Clarity that the task is reassigned, but the baseline information is retained.

     

    Clarity's Product Management team is looking to collect use cases and business impact of this limitation of the product design, so that the design can be adjusted in the future to better its users. Please promote and comment on the existing Idea on the Global User Community through this link:

     

    https://communities.ca.com/ideas/103037521



  • 2.  Re: CA PPM Tuesday Tip: Can baseline information be retained when replacing a role with a resource?

     
    Posted Feb 17, 2015 04:13 PM

    Thanks for the tip Kristin!

    Kristin Schroer wrote:

     

    Are you looking for a way to replace a role with a resource without losing baseline information?

     

    While in Clarity, as per design, baseline information is not retained when you replace a role with a resource, the good news is that you can use Open Workbench’s (OWB’s) transfer assignment feature to keep baseline information. The key is to ensure that the “Keep Baselines” check box is checked.

     

    To utilize the feature in OWB:

    1)    Open the project schedule in OWB.

    2)    Click the Project tab and then click the Transfer icon in the top menu.

    3)    Select the desired roles/resources in the “Transfer assignments from this resource” and “to this resource” drop downs.  

    4)    Important: Before moving the tasks to be reassigned, make sure to check the “Keep Baselines” check box.

    5)    Highlight the tasks you want to have reassigned in the left column, then click the arrow to click the right arrow to move the tasks to the new resource.

    6)    Click OK.

    7)    Save the OWB Schedule and you will see in Clarity that the task is reassigned, but the baseline information is retained.

     

    Clarity's Product Management team is looking to collect use cases and business impact of this limitation of the product design, so that the design can be adjusted in the future to better its users. Please promote and comment on the existing Idea on the Global User Community through this link:

     

    https://communities.ca.com/ideas/103037521



  • 3.  Re: CA PPM Tuesday Tip: Can baseline information be retained when replacing a role with a resource?

    Posted Feb 17, 2015 11:19 PM

    Thanks for this useful tip, Kristin

     

    NJ



  • 4.  Re: CA PPM Tuesday Tip: Can baseline information be retained when replacing a role with a resource?

    Posted Feb 18, 2015 12:58 PM

    I have a few questions regarding this tip/thread. 

     

    1) When you report "...baseline information is not retained when you replace a role with a resource..." do you mean the schedule & cost data in the baseline is deleted?  We tested this in our environment (using Clarity-Gantt, not OWB) and the baseline was unaffected when we replaced a role with a resource; the baseline schedule & cost was retained but the active schedule was affected.


    2) Also, I do not see how this could be "per design".  A baseline is a snapshot of the project schedule & cost at the time you click 'create baseline'.  Regardless of what you do to the active schedule after you click 'create baseline', the snapshot you took should never be altered.  It's the target date & cost at that point in the project.



  • 5.  Re: CA PPM Tuesday Tip: Can baseline information be retained when replacing a role with a resource?

    Posted Feb 18, 2015 05:20 PM

    For #2 baselining is not version control, but attributes on the current plan WBS so if you delete and WBS item from the current plan it is gone from the baseline as well.

    Say you have your project baselined

     

    You select the from and to resources and move the assignements

     

     

    The baseline usages are gone but not the agregate dollars for the resources

     

    If you do not choose to keep baselines

    Does not really make much difference.

    Seems to be as buggy as in Niku 6.0.13



  • 6.  Re: CA PPM Tuesday Tip: Can baseline information be retained when replacing a role with a resource?

    Posted Feb 19, 2015 05:01 PM

    Some more screenshots

    This is the baslined view before the transfers.

    This after the Role 1 to Resource1 transfer with keep baselines

    Notice that at project level the usage in hours and dollars remain as before for both usage and aggregate usage. Notice also that there is a basline usage for Role 1 even that is not assigned to any task in the current plan.

     

    This is after the Role 2 to Resource 2 transfer when not keeping baselines.

     

    Note that the task baseline usages are still there and the Project baseline usage also still shows the orginal values while the Baseline Aggregate usage values for the tasks and the project are reduces as expected when not  keeping baslines.

     

    This functionality of standard Baselines was introduced in Clarity 7.5 and a little later the earlier functionality in ABT Workbench and Niku Workbench was taken back as Baseline Aggregate.(on user request)

    Another feature of the standard baseline functionality was that it does not accumulate to summary tasks and project level. Have not verified for a couple of years whether or not it still behaves like that.