Project Resource Planning

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, qualifications, and availability.

The project lead first uses 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 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 or resources 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 Project Management.
You can select the resources by their availability. To do this, you can either use the resource planning application (RPA) from Service Resource Planning in SAP Customer Relationship Management (SAP CRM) or you can predefine the capacity of the resources by means of Customizing in Project Management; the latter is the simpler option.
You can schedule the resources with Portfolio Management.

Prerequisites

You created a project (see Creating a Project Definition).
You created resources (see Staffing of Roles with 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 (see Groupware Integration), you require SAP CRM and middleware, as well as Workforce Deployment.

Note Note

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

End of the note.

Process

You create a role. For more information, see Creating a Role.
You assign tasks to the role. For more information, see Task Assignment).
You define the qualifications (see Definition of Qualifications) that the resource needs to meet the requirements profile of the role.
When using project resource planning for direct staffing, you staff the role with resources (see Staffing of Roles with Resources). You can either assign resources straight away or first search for suitable and available resources (see Resource Search).
When using project resource planning as a staffing process (see Staffing Process), project managers and staffing managers work together to locate and assign resources to projects. To do this, you have to select the Resource Manager via Responsible Organization staffing type in Customizing for Project Management, by choosing Resource Management Basic Settings for Roles Define Role Types .
To reserve suitable resources provisionally, you can first save them as candidates (see 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 soft-book a resource for a particular role. For more information, see Creating Soft Bookings for Resources .
You can staff a role and define corresponding attributes without having to specify the resource straight away.
You can staff the role with the chosen resource. For more information, see Staffing Roles with Resources.
You notify (see Notifying a Selected Resource by E-Mail) the relevant resource or his or her manager by e-mail.
You schedule appointments for your resources.

Note

You can set up staffings in Project Management 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 Project Management so that they can be transferred from the RPA to Project Management. For more information, see SAP Note 866776.

End of the note.

Result

The project is staffed with suitable resources. You have assigned tasks, the work for this task assignment, and the period in which they are to be carried out, to each resource.