Power Framework PPM has its own resource pool of resources called 'Team Members'.
The Team Member table must be maintained to define the individuals that work on projects, including their role and skills, monthly capacity, and various other settings.
Access
The tables below are maintained to support the resource demand features of the tool.
| These functions can be accessed in the ‘Resource Management’ area (navigate to it via the area selector in the bottom left of the screen). |
Team Members
Team Members are resources on your Project as well as Stakeholders such as Sponsors.
Team Members will be defined with work capacity where appropriate (via the Resource Capacity table) and will be the driver for resource demand and capacity management.
Team Members can be actual users of the system, but they may not be.
The Team Member maintenance screen has various tabs as follows:
Tab: General
| Field | Comment |
| Name |
For a named resource this will be the person’s name. If this is a generic resource (i.e. the placeholder resource, if a named resource hasn’t been decided) then it is recommended that a consistent naming convention is followed, e.g. “GENERIC” & <Role Name>. |
| ID | Unique reference for this resource (used for integration with external systems) |
| Primary Role | Select from the list of Project Roles defined. This is the main role of the Team Member, which will drive the Resource Demand process. |
| User Account | If this Team Member is an actual user on the system, then select their user account. You can use the search to look for users on the system. |
| This team member's email address | |
| Generic | Specify ‘Yes’ if this is a generic resource, i.e. will be used in a Project as a placeholder resource to represent the role while the named resource hasn’t been decided. |
| Location | Text field to describe where this Team Member works |
| Azure Active Directory Link | Used for Azure Active Directory integration |
| Business Unit | Text field to indicate the business unit that this Team Member is a member of |
| AAD ID | Used for Azure Active Directory integration |
| List of Roles | Add additional Roles that may apply for this Team Member – this is not used for any Resource management functionality, it merely ensures that this Team Member shows up when searching for particular roles on Projects and Programmes (e.g. the Project Sponsor fields looks for Team Members that have the role ‘Sponsor’ in this list). |
Tab: Cost Sub-Categories
| Field | Comment |
| Default Cost Sub-Category |
Select from the list of previously defined Cost Sub-Categories (see Investment Parameters, Cost Sub-Category). This is used to determine which row will show the cost of this resource within the Investment calculation of the project or programme. When creating a Resource Demand for this Team Member, the Cost Sub-Category specified here will be applied by default. |
| List of Cost Sub-Categories |
Any Cost Sub-Categories added to this list can be used as alternatives to the Default Cost Sub-Category for this Team Member. This is used in the Resource Demand feature, where a project manager could change the default Cost Sub-Category to any Cost Sub-categories specified here. This might be used for Opex/Capex controls, e.g. you could assign a default sub-category of type Opex, but then define an alternative sub-category of type Capex in this list. As a result, the Team Member will typically be accounted for as Opex, but on a given project the project manager could change it to the Capex category if that is appropriate for the project. |
Tab: Skills
Here you can attach multiple Skills to this Team Member, picking them from the Skills table defined in the system. Skills are used in the resource assignment process: When project owners request a resource, in addition to specifying the role required they can add the skills that are needed. The resource approver then matches the right Team Member to the request, using the Skills defined for Team Members in this form:
| Field | Comment |
| Primary Skills |
Select from the list of previously defined Skills |
| Secondary Skills |
Select from the list of previously defined Skills (note that in terms of the Resource Approval process, there is no difference in terms of the way Primary and Secondary Skills are treated). |
Tab: Timesheets
The parameters here are relevant only if the Timesheet feature is in use. See details explained here.
Resource Capacity
This table allows you to specify how many days per month your Team Members are available for work on your projects. The capacity defined here will be compared to the demand from projects, to calculate remaining availability and highlight resource shortages.
In addition, this table will also define the standard rates for each Team Member, which will allow the system to convert days’ effort specified in project Resource Demand to cost and insert those into project investment calculations.
Default View
The default view of this table shows a collapsed list of Project Roles (as defined in Administration Core Records, Project Roles), with a number of years across the top (how many years is defined in Misc. Settings, see Investment Parameters, Miscellaneous Settings):
- The Capacity column shows the total capacity of all Team Members for the respective role for the given Year.
- The Rate column shows the average rate of all Team Members for the respective role for the given Year.
Navigation
- Expand individual roles to see Team Members and their individual Capacity and Rate data (use
buttons to expand/collapse all)
- Click
to ‘pop out’ this grid – it will open up in full-screen mode in another tab in your browser to provide a bigger canvas.
- Use
to expand Yearly columns to Monthly columns and back. Note that you can only enter data in Monthly mode.
- Use Column and Filter selectors on the right to modify which columns should be displayed and reduce the number of rows you wish to see.
Data Maintenance
Expand the grid to show Monthly columns and Team Members. You can now enter monthly Capacity and Rate.
We recommend maintaining these individually, i.e. hide Rate and maintain Capacity and vice versa. You can then conveniently use drag and drop to copy values from one row to others.
Be sure to click Save at the top to save any data entered.
Best practice:
- Enter the number of days capacity to reflect the working days in a given month, taking into account public holidays etc.
- Apply a zero capacity for months prior to the Team Member joining your organisation or any months post their departure.
- Reflect personal holidays by reducing a Team Member’s capacity in a given month by the number of days they are taking off (use the Annotation feature to attach a comment to the cell to indicate the reason for the reduction, see below).
- Team Members that are flagged as generic resources should be set up with zero capacity as otherwise the total capacity of all team members for a given role would be overstated.
- Rates should reflect standard resource costs within banded rates.
Annotation Feature
Right-click on a cell to add an Annotation, i.e. a note to explain the value in the cell as a reminder to yourself or an explanation to other users that might be maintaining this data:
Click Add to save the note, this will increase the note counter showing inside the Annotation button .
Click this button to see a list of all annotations:
Click the ‘View in Grid’ button next to the Annotation to jump to the cell within the grid that this Annotation is attached to.
Click ‘Highlight annotations on cells’ and hit the Close button – all cells with annotations will now show a red surround, so you can identify at a glance all cells in the grid that have an Annotation.
Back in the grid, right-click to edit or remove an Annotation.
Note that none of your Annotations are saved until you hit the Save button at the top.