Resource Planning

To plan resources for a project in Project Management, you must first define project roles, such as project management, developers, consultants, or testers and determine the necessary resource requirement for each role. You can also assign project structure tasks or qualification requirements for the role. As the next step, you can search for suitable resources and staff the roles with the resources.

Resources are technically depicted as business partners in Project Management; so both internal employees and external partners can be used to staff roles. In Project Management there are several possibilities for staffing roles; for example, you can structure the staffing of roles into several smaller steps, which means that you can create a list of possible candidates or reserve resources before the actual staffing.

Resource planning in Project Management always refers to projects. To implement resource planning for a project, you should have already created at least one project definition for this project. The preceding graphic, shows a schematic of the resource planning process steps. If similar resources are always required for projects, the process steps for resource planning can be implemented in a project template. So, the creation of projects with templates minimizes the effort for resource planning.

To setup resource planning you must start by defining the project roles. Roles represent general descriptions of the resource requirements. When you create a role, you must enter a description for the role, such as project lead, developer or tester, and specify the resource requirement and time frame for this role.

The role type, which you must assign to the role when you create it, decides whether you can only create a total requirement for the total time frame of the role, or plan the detailed requirement for individual periods. Role types are defined in Customizing for Project Management. If you want to search for suitable resources later, you can also assign qualification requirements for the role. To do this, select the relevant qualifications from a qualifications catalog, and specify the required proficiency of the qualification that a potential resource is required to possess.

You can also assign tasks to a role. By assigning tasks to a role, you can also incorporate the qualification requirements of the tasks that need suitable resources later. If you use the CATS time sheet for confirming tasks in project management, the assignment of tasks is also useful for filling the CATS worklist.

After defining a role and assigning tasks, you can staff the role with resources, and distribute the role requirement to the individual resources. The project type and the role type decide how the suitable resources are to be determined, and how and by whom the roles are staffed with resources. You can use both internal and external resources to staff a role, because the resources are technically represented as business partners in Project Management. You can create business partners manually in SAP Portfolio and Project Management, or you can use Human Capital Management integration to derive them from HR master data from SAP Human Capital Management.

If you have staffed a role with one or more resources and the role type provides a distribution, you can distribute the planned requirement of the role to the assigned resources specific to the period (day, week, or month). These resources can be distributed within project processing, centrally and across all projects, using the SAP Portfolio and Project Management fast entry screens.

Roles are created specifically for the project with reference to the definition of a project. When you create a role, you specify a name for the role and a more detailed description. To specify a role in more detail, you can define a location for the role, define notes, or link documents with the role.​

When you create a role, you must select a role type that controls the basic properties for the definition of the role requirements and the later staffing of the role. Role types are defined and assigned to a project type in Customizing for Project Management. When you create roles for a project, you can only access the role types that are assigned to the project type.

When you enter a role function in the definition of a role, the system allows you to integrate the role requirements and the required capacities distributed to assigned resources in SAP Portfolio and Project Management capacity planning.

You can also use the role function to evaluate resource data of similar roles in BI reporting across all projects. This means that you can define a role function, such as project management, and assign it to the corresponding roles in your projects. In reporting, you can evaluate all requirements for this role function in an aggregated form, regardless of what the individual roles in the projects are called.

You can use the resource search during project-centric and cross-project staffing. You can search for criteria, such as organizational units or locations. The general search for resources also allows you to search for business partners who had a certain project role in the past, or who have already been responsible for a particular customer.

The result of the resource search is a list of suitable business partners. You can use this list to assign business partners directly to the project role or enter them as candidates in a candidate list.

To create roles in a Project Management project, you must first define suitable project role types in Customizing for Project Management, and assign them to the project type. The preceding graphic shows the definition of a project role type.

The staffed by field in the project role type controls who is allowed to staff roles with resources in this role type in the following scenarios:

• Project Lead:

  The project role is staffed by the project lead or a resource manager within the project. For this, the Administration and Resource Management authorizations are required in the Project Management project.

• Resource Manager through Authorization:

  In SAP Portfolio and Project Management, users with the Staffing Manager or Candidate Manager authorizations can view the corresponding roles in a fast entry screen. The users can then use the fast entry screen to navigate to the staffing of the roles, or to the creation of a candidate list for the relevant roles.

• Resource Manager through Responsible Organization:

  The roles are staffed using the extended staffing process. In SAP Portfolio and Project Management, the staffing or selection of suitable candidates can be performed using a fast entry screen.

If you want to distribute role requirements to individual periods, that is, if you want to use the fast entry screens in SAP Portfolio and Project Management, select the Distribution checkbox in the role type. If you want to staff a role with more than one resource at one time, select the Edit in Parallel checkbox in the corresponding role type.

In the definition of role types and in the definition of project types, you must assign a role type to project types in Customizing for Project Management. When you create a role type, you can also assign default authorizations to the role type. If a role for this role type is staffed with resources in Project Management, the resources automatically receive these default authorizations in the corresponding project at the project definition level.

If you want to integrate resource planning data from Project Management with SAP Portfolio and Project Management capacity planning, you must assign role functions to roles. You define role functions in Customizing for Project Management. To define a role function, you only specify an identification and a name, such as Project Management, Quality Management, or Development.

The resources that you can use for the staffing of roles in Project Management projects and, therefore, for resource planning are depicted technically as business partners in SAP Portfolio and Project Management.

A business partner can represent either of the following resources:

• An external resource:

  For example, an external consultant or developer who supports in the execution of IT projects

• An internal resource:

  For example, employees of your own company

A business partner can include general information, such as the name or address data, as well as information about the availability, location, or qualifications of the resource.

There are several options for creating business partners. One method is to generate business partners using HCM integration with the existing HR data of employees and update them later, if necessary. When maintaining personnel numbers in HCM, the system automatically creates a business partner with the corresponding role in background and assigns personnel number and user ID to this business partner.

To create business partners manually, that is, without the HCM integration, use one of the following methods:

• Use transaction BP in the SAP Portfolio and Project Management core system.
• Create the business partners directly in SAP Portfolio and Project Management.

The Resources view allows an SAP Portfolio and Project Management administrator to analyze, create, and change business partners.

The administrator can add the following additional details for a business partner:

• Availability during certain periods
• Location assignment during certain periods
• Specification about the periods in which the business partner is active or inactive

To create or change business partners in the core system, you can use transaction BP, Maintain Business Partner. When creating business partners in the transaction BP, use the business partner role Employee with the technical identification BUP003. If you also want to assign a cost or revenue rate for costing in Project Management, define the business partner role Resource with the technical identification WFM001.

To assign qualifications manually to a business partner, in the core system, you can use transaction PPPM, Change Qualifications Profile. Using transaction OOQA, Change Qualification Catalog, you can manually create qualifications catalogs in the core system, or add any additional qualifications to catalogs that you transferred from an HCM system. If you do not want to transfer the definition from an HCM system, you can manually define scales for possible qualification proficiencies in Customizing.

You can also use transaction RPM_EMPDATA, Employee Overview, to analyze and edit business partners. This transaction is useful to check the completeness of data for resources.

You can combine several business partners in a resource pool in SAP PPM. You can then assign one or more resource managers to a resource pool, so they can analyze the capacity utilization of resources of the pool and their assignment to project roles on the Resources fast entry screen, and, if necessary, change the temporal distribution of the resources to project roles.

After you have defined project roles in a Project Management project, the roles can be staffed with resources. Role staffing means that you assign business partners to the project roles as resources. You also specify the validity period of this assignment and the work effort that is expected of the resource in this role. Depending on the setting of the role type, the work effort can be assigned in the form of a total required capacity, or distributed to individual periods. To be able to use fast entry screens in SAP Portfolio and Project Management, the role type must provide a distribution of required capacities.

If the project type of a Project Management project allows, you can use a resource search to determine suitable resources. The search function transfers all data necessary for the search from the project role definition as search criteria; the search criteria include the validity period and the location, the qualification requirements, or the role requirement. The search criteria can be changed in the search function without changing the attributes of the project role. In this way, you can specify additional qualification requirements for the search. You can also enter additional search criteria. For example, you can restrict the search to resources that have already worked for certain customers or ordering parties, or to resources of certain organizational units.

After you have determined the search criteria and started a search, you receive a list of the resources that were determined as suitable candidates according to your search criteria. The list of search results provides information and functions that can help you as you continue processing. You have the option of navigating to the detailed data of a resource or view a list of existing assignments to project roles of other projects. The system also displays the manager of each resource in the search result list. When you have decided on a particular resource from the list, you can e-mail the relevant manager of the resource to notify them of the project. You can store resources as candidates or firmly assign them to a project, straight from the list.

Fast Entry Screen Staffing

On the Staffing Overview fast entry screen, there is a list of all projects for which you have role staffing (or candidate management) authorization. If you expand a project in this list, the system displays the roles and any existing role staffing. The role requirement and the distribution of resources over the validity period of the roles are listed periodically. Yellow and red traffic lights notify if a role is not yet fully staffed or not staffed at all in certain periods.

To reduce the number of projects listed in this fast entry screen, you can use filter functions and favorites. Favorites are summaries of Project Management projects. You can use a favorites list of internal projects and one of the customer projects. You can make further settings for the period to be displayed, the time unit for the display of requirements and staffing, and the period breakdown. You can navigate to the details of the project, the project roles, or the assigned resources.

You can use fast entry screens to determine unstaffed project roles, navigate to the staffing of project roles and perform a staffing, and then go back to the fast entry screen to distribute the role requirements to the resources for individual periods. In addition to manually distribute the role requirements for individual periods in the fast entry screens, you can use Distribution to distribute work equally across several periods.

If you call the Resources Overview fast entry screen in SAP Portfolio and Project Management, you receive a list of all resources for which you are responsible as a resource manager. To make an assignment between resources and resource managers, you should have already defined the corresponding resource pool. If you expand an entry for a resource in the list, the system displays the projects and project roles to which the resource is assigned. The distribution of a resource to the relevant roles and the total and remaining availability of the resource are also displayed periodically. Red traffic lights notify you of an overload of resources.

You can click to navigate to the details of a resource, the project, and roles. To reduce the number of resources in the list, you can use filter functions or favorites. Here, favorites are summaries of business partners or resources. Using this fast entry screen, you can also manually distribute work for resources to project roles for individual periods manually or use the extended distribution function.

Hint

To perform or change distributions in a fast entry screen, the settings for the time unit and period breakdown must be the same as those in the project role.

In the extended staffing process, the individual steps for resource planning or resource staffing are controlled using status management. The various steps of the extended staffing process, the relevant status, and responsible users are displayed in the preceding figure. If changes to previous process steps are required in the extended staffing process, you can also reset the status of the current responsible user. In this scenario, the responsibilities are determined using the organizational units from SAP HCM.

The project lead determines which organizational units are responsible for resource search and candidate management, or for the staffing of the role in the status Staffing in Preparation. They can also select a person responsible for candidate management and a staffing manager from the organizational units.

Note that a project lead can only select organizational units for the extended staffing process to which candidate management managers and staffing managers are assigned. You must create or change organizational units and assign candidate management managers or staffing managers in the core system using transactions PPOCE and PPOME, you can Create/Change Organization and Staffing.

During a project, various situations may arise where the project schedule conflicts with the resource management and role-task assignments. In project planning, a check functionality is provided to analyze and resolve date and distribution conflicts of roles, staffing, and role-task-assignments for task and project dates.

You can start the conflict overview by choosing Check Conflicts when editing a project. The conflict overview displays each single date conflict in reference to the related objects.

The conflict overview provides actions to resolve the identified date conflicts, in the following ways:

• New dates are suggested to update the role and resource dates to match the planned project and task dates.
• The user can manually maintain dates in the overview to solve identified conflicts.

Planned project and task dates are not changed by conflict handling. By adjusting the dates, the current dates are replaced and the conflicts are solved. By adjusting the dates and the distribution, both the dates and the distribution are adjusted to solve the conflicts. Equal distribution of the original demand is completed in the new timeframe.