Clarity

  • 1.  Manage changing capacity with generic resources

    Posted Dec 01, 2016 06:20 AM

    Hello,

     

    I have a PPM client with the following situation:

     

    They use generic resources instead of named ones, that is, they create a resource in PPM let´s say resource A that can represent more than one resource in the real life, for example, if they have 3 persons to work the resource will have the capacity of this 3 real resources just in one PPM resource. Also the number of  real resources is not fixed, it can change over time, that is, maybe for 2 months, there will be 2 resources available and after increase to 5 and then decrease and so on

     

    If the number of  real resources under the generic one was fixed over the time the generic resource availability or capacity could be defined multiplying the number of resources by the number of work hours per day, for example: 3 real resources x 8 work hours/day = 24 hours/day generic resource availability.

     

    The problem happens when the number of real resources change over the time, if they change the generic resource availability it will change the whole availability over the time and that is not what they want because the capacity will not be true. They manage the situation now using calendars and shifts but they find it difficult to mantain, so they want to know if this a better way to manage this kind of scenario or which would be the best practice to follow.

     

    Thanks very much for your advice.

     

    Best regards

    Pilar



  • 2.  Re: Manage changing capacity with generic resources

    Broadcom Employee
    Posted Dec 01, 2016 05:19 PM

    Best practice is to use Roles to represent the generic resources. You then have the real resources with the role as their primary role which represents the capacity, and the role allocation on the investment team which represents the demand.



  • 3.  Re: Manage changing capacity with generic resources

    Posted Dec 07, 2016 02:24 AM

    Hello Janet,

     

    Thanks a lot for your answer.

     

    The problem is with the resource´s capacity. The client uses generic resources and want to manage with one resource the capacity of more than one real resource being this capacity variable over the time, for example:

    For each unit they have defined an external an internal resource,

    External

    Internal

    then lets say, there are 3 real external resources and 2 real internal resources, so

    for the external we have a capacity of 3 and for the internal 2,

    They define this capacity incrementing the availability at the resource´s general properties, that is for the external the availability is 3 with a standard 8 hours calendar, and for the internal is 2.

    This could be ok if the capacity was fixed over the time, but the problem is that the capacity can change, for example from January to March they have 3 real resources, and for April to June 5, and for the rest of the year 2.

    The question is if this scenario could be implemented with just one generic external or internal resource and how would be the best way to do it.

     

    Thanks a lot

     

    Pilar