Project Resource Planning 

Purpose

Having the right employees at the right place at the right time is one of the central requirements of today’s human resource management.

Project Resource Planning provides a planning tool for you to optimize your human resource deployment. It focuses on using your employees efficiently and assigning them to projects or orders based on demand and qualifications.

The project lead first uses project roles to depict which type of resource is required in a project, that is, which function the employee (resource) carries out in the project. The project role includes information about the qualifications the resource should have and when and for how long the resource should be available. The project lead can assign tasks to the roles straight away.

In the resource search, the system determines suitable resources for each role and task on the basis of their qualifications. The project lead’s or customer’s preferred resources can be stored as candidates in the system.

In the staffing process, staffing or candidate managers can also determine resources based on their availability.

The project lead or resource manager can first reserve their preferred resource or assign the resource straight away. At the same time, the project lead can send e-mails to resources with details of the project, directly from the application.

You have the following options for carrying out project resource planning:

●      You can do all your planning in cProjects.

●      You can select the resources by their availability. To do this, you need the resource planning application (RPA) from Service Resource Planning in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM).

●      You can schedule the resources with SAP xRPM.

Prerequisites

●      You created a project.

●      You created resources as business partners in Resource Management.

●      You created the role of the person responsible for the project.

●      If you want to use groupware integration, you require SAP CRM and middleware, as well as Workforce Deployment.

You can transfer organization types, qualifications, and approximate availability from mySAP Human Capital Management.

Process Flow

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       1.      You create a project role. For more information, see Creating a Project Role.

       2.      You assign tasks to the project role.

       3.      You define the qualifications that the resource needs to meet the requirements profile of the role.

       4.      When using project resource planning for direct staffing, you staff the role with resources. You can either assign resources straight away or first search for suitable and available resources.

When using project resource planning as a staffing process, project managers and staffing managers work together to locate and assign resources to projects.

       5.      To reserve suitable resources provisionally, you can first save them as candidates until you have clarified whether the employee or the employee's manager agrees to his or her participation in the project. You can also reserve a resource for a particular project role.

       6.      You can staff the project role with the chosen resource.

       7.      You notify the relevant resource or his or her manager by e-mail or by a groupware task if there is groupware integration.

       8.      You schedule appointments for your resources.

You can set up staffings in cProjects but you cannot schedule appointments. If you want to schedule appointments, you can use the RPA.

The time units from the RPA must be defined as permitted time units in cProjects so that they can be transferred from the RPA to cProjects. For more information, see SAP Note 866776.

       9.      You send these appointments to the resources using the groupware.

Result

The project is staffed with suitable resources. You have assigned tasks, the required capacity for these tasks, and the period in which they are to be carried out, to each resource.