John:
Share with us more about how you used this tool on a recent project. What are the benefit to a CAPM, PMP, Program Manager to use this tool and at what point in the project process especially since many orgs require MS Project for management and reporting? Saving Changes...
Hi John,
I do all three, but wearing two hats. The first two are more at the Portfolio Management level to understand organisational capacity to deliver. This is often done before you have even assigned a project manager or done any detailed planning for the project. Note there are no task assignments just resource types expected to be used by the project. So there needs to be a step 2b where the WBS and scheduling occur before you start tracking actuals.
Level 3 is post detailed planning when the schedule and resource assignments have been completed. This is what most project managers are more familiar with.
Your comment "Many organizations don’t track expenses to this level of detail, so this level of activity would not provide a positive return" is not totally accurate, PMs track to this level of detail in order to determine estimate to complete and gather metrics for the basis for future project estimates. Saving Changes...
Naomi,
At the portfolio level, resource management is more a view of available and consumed resource capacity, so looking at things from the allocation level is fine for most companies. You can use available tools or the simple spreadsheet I have attached to the original post. For each resource, you need to know their available capacity ((Hours per period) - non-project committed activities). From this you track the project-level allocations. When this is rolled up to the portfolio level, you can easily see where new resources will be needed for new or current projects and be able to answer the question of "can we take on new projects?"
At the project level, you will want more than allocation. Most PMs want to know how much capacity has been allocated and then use this value to assign the resources. The PM will be looking for variance of allocation to assignment and assignment to actuals to use as a guide of how they are doing with estimates and resource consumption. When looking at assigned hours, the PM also needs access to ETC and other values. When you estimate at 8 hours of effort and your actuals come back at 4 hours of effort with ETC of 0, you will need to adjust the activity and all attached activities should move left on the Gantt chart; therefore adjusting your critical path and a lot of other factors.
A good resource/functional manager and project manager will want to see a daily or weekly report showing allocations, assignments, and actuals with variance for each resource and each project.
I hope this answers your questions. Allocation, assignments, and actuals are very important and your level in the organization will decide how you are going to use the information. Resoruce management is very easy when you look at the "3 As" and their variances. You shouldn't have to spend a lot of money for a solution when a simple spreadsheet and some effort can give you the same information. Saving Changes...
