Oracle Projects makes it easy to integrate your task-level workplan staffing efforts with the creation and maintenance of an overall project team. It enables you to create project-level team role requirements and assignments from rolled-up task assignments through a staffing process called bottom-up resource planning. And it enables you to create roles on the project team for resources and then assign those resources to tasks through a staffing process called top-down resource planning.
This section covers bottom-up and top-down resource planning. It also discusses the Resource Usage page, which enables you to review scheduled usage of planning resources. You use this page when you perform bottom-up resource planning, but it can also be used simply to track how particular project resources are being used on a project and identify resources that are in danger of becoming overextended.
Reviewing Resource Usage
You can use the Resource Usage page to review the overall usage capacity of all planning resources associated to your projects. This helps you to determine how well resources are being used on the project and can highlight situations where specific resources are being under- or overutilized.
When you access the Resource Usage page, you choose the workplan version for which you want to view resources and the class of resource that you want to see. You can view all planning resources at once, or only the resources that belong to one of the four resource classes.
The Resource Usage Page is view-only when you are reviewing planning resource usage information for resources of the equipment, material item, and financial element resource classes. The Resource Usage page is also view only when you view planning resource usage information for all resource classes at once.
When you use it to review information for people class planning resources, the Resource Usage page enables you to update team roles for people class planning resources with scheduled team roles on the project and create team roles for people class planning resources that have not been scheduled on the project. The act of creating team roles for unscheduled planning resources is part of bottom-up resource planning.
For more information about bottom-up resource planning, see Planning Resources from the Bottom Up, page 2-18.
When you use the Resource Usage page to view usage for people class planning resources only, you can see how each people resource is being utilized on each task to which they are assigned. The resource usage page also tells you whether their current usage is above or below their overall project capacity. It does this by subtracting the overall planned quantity for a people resource from its project capacity. The planned quantity is the planned effort for the task assignments with which the people resource is associated. The project capacity is the team role effort for the people resource.
Note: When the planned effort is distributed over the working days, a discrepancy in the total can occur due to rounding. The discrepancy is corrected in the effort calculated for the last day of the schedule.
When a people class resource does not have a scheduled team role on the project, the system lists its Team Role as None and does not display a value for it in the Project Capacity column. Because their project capacity is effectively zero, people class planning resources without project team roles are always under capacity according to the Resource Usage page.
Planning Resources From The Bottom Up
When you plan your resources from the bottom up, you create project-level team role requirements and assignments for people class planning resources that have already been given task assignments on your project.
To Plan Resources From The Bottom-Up
1. After you create your workplan, assign planning resources to its tasks.
For more information about assigning planning resources to tasks, see Creating Resource Assignments, page 2-15.
2. Go to the Resource Usage page to review the overall usage of the planning resources on your project. Use the Create Team Roles button to create new team roles for your project.
If you have planning resources with team role schedules that are out of sync with the overall project, you can select them and use the Update Team Roles button to update them.
For more information about the Resource Usage page, see Reviewing Resource Usage, page 2-17.
3. On the Create Team Roles page, you can further define the team roles that you are creating for your project and apply your changes to have the planning resources show up at the project level on the Scheduled People page. For more information, see Creating Team Roles, page 2-19.
When all your team roles are created, the system associates the planning resources to open project requirements or assignments. For more information about project
requirements and assignments, see Defining Scheduled Team Members, Oracle Projects Fundamentals User Guide.
You can also use the Update Team Roles page to update team role start and end dates in reaction to changes to the workplan.
The manner in which you carry out bottom-up resource planning differs depending upon whether or not you use a centralized or decentralized planning resource list for your project.
If you use a centralized planning resource list (a planning resource list that covers more than one project in your organization), the tasks of planning resource creation and team role creation are divided between two team members with different project roles. For example, when a centralized planning resource list is being used, you typically would have the project manager create the task assignments while a staffing manager that oversees all the projects that use the planning resource list would review resource usage and create team roles.
If you use a non-centralized planning resource list that is specific to the project you're working with, then the same team member can create planning resources and team roles for the project.
Creating Team Roles
You use the Create Team Role page to create roles on the project team for planning resources that have been assigned to workplan tasks.
The Team Role and Role fields are populated with the team roles and project roles of the selected planning resources, if they have already been defined for those resources. If the planning resource has multiple roles on various task-level resource assignments, the Role field is blank. You can only update the Team Role field for planning resources without defined team roles.
If a planning resource has a person defined for it, the name of the person appears in the Person column, and it is view-only. If the planning resource does not have a defined person, the Person column is blank.
Note: If you have a generic task-level planning resource assignment that is linked to a project requirement, that generic planning resource is by replaced by the specific planning resource you use to fill the project requirement. For example, say you have a task with a generic "DBA"
planning resource assignment, and that this resource assignment is linked to a specific project requirement. You decide to fill the project requirement with Mary Smith, a specific person-class planning resource. When you do this, the system replaces the generic "DBA"
planning resource on the task with Mary Smith. For more information about project requirements, see Defining Scheduled Team Members, Oracle Projects Fundamentals User Guide.
On the Create Team Roles page, you cannot edit the Team Role value if it is part of the planning resource format. You can always update the Role value, which is a required attribute for team role creation.
You can base the resource schedule on the project calendar, the resource calendar, or the task assignment schedule. When you select the task assignment schedule and create the team role, the system sums the effort hours from all of the resource assignments for the planning resource and spreads them evenly across the working days between the team role start and end dates.
When you apply your changes, the system creates the team roles and updates the Resource Usage page with the new usage information.
Planning Resources From The Top Down
With Oracle Projects Management, when you plan your resources from the top down, you can create roles on the project team for resources and then assign those resources to tasks.
You start by determining the staffing needs of the project by creating project
requirements or assignments and associating team roles to them. The system then either matches those project requirements with existing planning resources or, if no matching planning resources exist, generates planning resources that fit the requirements using a
predefined resource format. You can then assign these scheduled planning resource to tasks.
The manner in which you carry out top down resource planning differs depending upon whether or not you use a centralized or decentralized planning resource list for your project.
If the planning resource list for your organization is not centrally controlled (specific to your project), one person can perform this process.
If your planning resource list is centrally controlled (used across multiple projects), then typically a person in a staffing manager or similar role defines the project requirements and assignments and oversees the matching of planning resources to them. When the system has made all possible matches it can make, the project manager reviews the updated planning resource list and assigns the scheduled planning resources to tasks.
Note: If you use a centrally controlled planning list for your project, the system cannot automatically generate planning resources for project requirements and project assignments. It instead sends a message stating that no matching planning resources exist.
Defining Resource Formats
Top-down resource planning functionality enables the system to try to match available planning resources to the open project requirements and assignments that you create. If it cannot find any planning resources that match, and you use a decentralized planning resource list for your project, it can automatically generate a planning resource that fits the open requirement or assignment according to resource formats that you predefine.
These formats are defined on the Additional Staffing Information setup page under the Resources tab. You can define separate resource formats for project requirement creation and project assignment creation. For example, if you define a resource format of Job-Org for project requirement creation, the system generates a planning resource with a Job-Org format to fit the project requirements that you create.
Related Topics
Creating Resource Assignments, page 2-15
Defining Scheduled Team Members, Oracle Projects Fundamentals