Clarity

Hello CA PPM Community, Kathryn_Ellis.

I would like to see some discussion, documentation, best practice on Role-Based Cost Planning. I think it would be most beneficial to hear and learn how others set up their CA PPM environments for Role based planning. Specifically, I would like to understand the full picture and process flow. Starting with setting up the system for Role based planning.

CA PPM Set-up:

Roles and their properties - Do you financially enable the Role? Expense Type Role? Add any Supplemental information added such as Transaction Class or Resource Class? Best practice?

Rate Marix - basic setup, Do you use ETC's to forecast hours --> cost using Rate Marix, use Allocations? What is best practice?

Cost Plan - Do you create plan from Task Assignments or Investment Team? Which is best practice? Grouping Attributes?

Projects - do you use Tasks? set up tasks for Capital and Operating expenses, assign those expense Role(s) to the tasks?  Add ETC's? Use Allocations? Best Practice?

Transaction Class - do these need to match the roles? ie. Contigency Role, CONTG transaciton class. Transaction Type? Expense or Labor, does it matter or is there a benefit to using material and equipment? Best practice?

Resource Classs - do these need to be Labor and Non-Labor, or EMP, CONT, NONEXP? What about the Resource Type? Just Expense and Labor, does it matter or is there a benefit to using material and equipment? Best practice?

What Reports or Portlets do you use for roll-up cost information?

Even a workflow would be a big help.

etc...

Thank you,

Keri

There are several questions here .

Here is a first pass from a functional aspect within the application.

If any customers have any feedback for Keri on best practices on how you configure the application, I think it would help her.

Role Setup :

     Roles can have financial properties, but it does not include Department/Location OBS because Roles are not meant to have actual hours posted (only named resources)

     To use Roles in detailed financial cost plans, if you intend to use Department/Location OBS in the plan 'Grouping' Attributes, AND the OBS unit is used in the matrix for computing costs, when the role is placed on the project team, be sure to select a 'Staff OBS Unit' and populate the plan using the TEAM.

Matrix Columns:

     When forecasting cost planning data, the amounts are pulled from the live matrix associated with the investment. When actual hours are posted from a timesheet, the cost is computed from the rates stored in the Rate Matrix Extraction NBI table.  This may cause differences between actuals and planned data which may be expected depending on the desired configuration outcome.  Some of the Cost Plan Grouping attributes are tied directly to a resource and are usually not varied, whereas other attributes can be used at the project level, team level or task level and at the timesheet entry for different outcomes in computing actual costs.

Cost Plan population:

     Populate from Investment Team : If planning by Cost Type, this allows you to use 'Capitalization %' on the Team Staff Member properties.  Then when you populate the plan, the cost type will be divided by the Capitalization percentage for 'Capital' and the remaining percentage will go to 'Operating' for the allocation hours.  If planning by Department/Location OBS and you have roles, this is where you would have the 'Staff OBS Unit' pulled for the roles on this investment for grouping by OBS.

     Populate from Task Assignment : This provides more granular planning by allowing you to change data specific to some of the Cost Plan Grouping attributes at a more granular level ; such as Cost Type or charge code.

Transaction Class and Resource Class:  These classifications must match the type of Resource or Role (Labor, Expense, Equipment, Material), but within each 'type' you can have different values for classifications.

Thank you Kathryn_Ellis

Role Setup :

     Roles can have financial properties, but it does not include Department/Location OBS because Roles are not meant to have actual hours posted (only named resources)

     To use Roles in detailed financial cost plans, if you intend to use Department/Location OBS in the plan 'Grouping' Attributes, AND the OBS unit is used in the matrix for computing costs, when the role is placed on the project team, be sure to select a 'Staff OBS Unit' and populate the plan using the TEAM.

1. We have set up two Roles for planning (Ideas). Planning Labor Role and Planning Expense Role. We populated the supplemental information for resource class for the two. ie. Labor, Expense. We are not financially enabling our roles.

2. We are using the Staff OBS Unit for the role and populating team assignments when creating the cost plan for inflight projects.

3. We are using Expense Roles (software, hardware, etc...) for inflight projects.

Matrix Columns:

     When forecasting cost planning data, the amounts are pulled from the live matrix associated with the investment. When actual hours are posted from a timesheet, the cost is computed from the rates stored in the Rate Matrix Extraction NBI table.  This may cause differences between actuals and planned data which may be expected depending on the desired configuration outcome.  Some of the Cost Plan Grouping attributes are tied directly to a resource and are usually not varied, whereas other attributes can be used at the project level, team level or task level and at the timesheet entry for different outcomes in computing actual costs.

1. We have built a matrix with department, role, transacion class added into the other columns.

Cost Plan population:

     Populate from Investment Team : If planning by Cost Type, this allows you to use 'Capitalization %' on the Team Staff Member properties.  Then when you populate the plan, the cost type will be divided by the Capitalization percentage for 'Capital' and the remaining percentage will go to 'Operating' for the allocation hours.  If planning by Department/Location OBS and you have roles, this is where you would have the 'Staff OBS Unit' pulled for the roles on this investment for grouping by OBS.

     Populate from Task Assignment : This provides more granular planning by allowing you to change data specific to some of the Cost Plan Grouping attributes at a more granular level ; such as Cost Type or charge code.

1. We have used manual cost plan creation for planning (Idea's). Our grouping attributes are Cost Type, Role, Transaction Class and Department.

2. We are using the Staff OBS Unit for the role for inflight projects.

3. Using ETC's for costs and have created two Tasks for Expenses. ie. Capital and Operating Tasks. Added the expense Role to the tasks.

4. We are populating the cost plan using Task Assignment and our grouping attributes are Cost Type, Role, Transaction Class and Departement. for inflight projects. For planning (Ideas) we are manually creating the cost plan.

Transaction Class and Resource Class:  These classifications must match the type of Resource or Role (Labor, Expense, Equipment, Material), but within each 'type' you can have different values for classifications.

1. We have decided to use the Trasaction Class.

ie. Hardware = HDWR

Software = SFWR

Employee = EMP

Contractor = CONG (Contigent Worker)

etc...

I would love to hear how others have done their annual planning. Anyone else?

Thanks,

Keri