Introduction to Resource Management

Information

Resource management in PLANTA encompasses both the planning and administration of resources and operates on three levels.

1. First, resources must be defined in the PLANTA system and standard planning parameters must be assigned to them as master data. This is done by administrators or the project management office.

2. Only then can project managers plan for the necessary resource allocation and the associated effort in their projects. However, they can only see resources of their own projects. Although they can view resource utilization in other projects, they cannot influence it.

3. Operational resource management is handled within the departments. Resource, skill, and department managers use this feature to manage the workload of their resources and can distribute or reallocate the workload planned by project managers among individual staff members within the department. They have a cross-project view of resources.

In addition, both project and multi-project managers, as well as resource, skill, and department managers, have access to numerous resource reports, such as those detailing resource utilization.

Resource Master Data

Information

• In the Project Management Administration role, PLANTA provides different modules for defining and managing resource master data. The central module is the Resource Data Sheet in which the master data parameters of all resources are defined and their availability for planning in projects are determined.

• PLANTA supports different types of resources: both employees as person resources and department resources, skills and monetary resources such as cost and revenue resources.

• In the master data you can also define which users are allowed to view certain resources and which are not. This also determines what resources, for example, project managers have at their disposal when planning their projects.

For detailed information on the recording of resource master data, please see here.

Planning the Resource in Projects

Process

• The planning of resources in projects takes place in the Schedule module.

  • As a first step, the required resources are assigned to the tasks. When resources are assigned to tasks, default scheduling parameters are automatically imported from the master data; however, project managers can modify these parameters for each individual task, and the changes then apply only to those specific projects.

  • Subsequently, the effort required to complete the respective task is defined.

  • Once the schedule has been calculated, the planned workload is automatically distributed across the resource's individual planning periods (days, weeks, etc.) based on its availability and its planning in other projects. PLANTA also offers a model for manually planning work per period (day), which may be useful for certain planning models. In the following topics you will learn how costs are planned or calculated and how they are allocated.

• The project manager can either create an outline plan for their projects—for example, using only departmental resources or skills—the workloads of which can then be allocated to individual resources by the resource managers. Alternatively they can also plan the employee resources directly. PLANTA is also flexible when it comes to planning units. It is possible to plan using hours or days.

For more details on the procedure for planning resources in projects, please refer to the description of the Schedule module. In the following chapters, you will find more information about various planning models and functions.

Resource/Department Management

Information

• The Department Board is a central board for managing your department’s resources in the PLANTA software. It provides access to all relevant modules and views, such as resource utilization, an option for rescheduling planned effort, and overviews of absences and hours actually worked, etc.

• In the PLANTA standard system, the Department Board panel is included in the Resource/Skill Manager role.

Caution: The Resource Manager/Department Manager role comes with special authorization settings. For further information, see here.

Details

• PLANTA also offers an option for a closer integration of the planning and management process between project and resource managers through resource requests and approvals. For detailed information on this topic, please see here.