Better alternatives to Resource Managers on projects

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Hey folks! One of the avenues of research we are conducting on Resource Management suite in Workfront is to make it more accessible to the users in the system and part of it is to remove the prerequisite of being set as a Resource Manager on a project in order to access and effectively use Resource Planning and Scheduling areas of the application. We are interested in your feedback on that initiative and would definitely appreciate any input on this topic! To make things easier, we have split the main areas affected by that change in 3 questions which can be found below: With Resource Manager prerequisite gone, how would you prefer to control access to Resource Management suite in Workfront? Would you have different people accessing to Planning and Scheduling areas? What levels of access would you like to set? Please feel free to post any comments, concerns or questions in this thread, a discussion on this topic will go a long way in providing the best experience for Workfront Resource Management suite! Thanks, Vazgen Vazgen Babayan Product Manager, Workfront

[Mike_Crabtree]

Hey Vazgen, Visibility for a wider audience would be great, ie. allowing others in the organisation to view currently planned/scheduled work (outside of the projects they are part of) - this would provide a quicker understanding of workload in the department - too often we have request put through for work that we do not have the capacity in the department to fulfill - an overview would give the requesters visibility of available resource/timeslots - they may manage client expectations earlier. I would, however, be reluctant to give over access allowing them to 'lock' in and confirm resource. Our original vision for resource management was that anyone initiating a request for work would see what time slots are available, make a 'tentative' booking, notification would then be sent to the resource manager (or head of department) and they woudl validate the request and lock it it. Look fwd to seeing updates and where you end up., thanks, Mike Crabtree

[DavidCo3]

I've already provided some feedback on this topic, but in general I agree with removing the resource manager role (especially as pertaining to permissions/visibility). Perhaps access to the Planner and Scheduling screens could just be controlled through access levels and layout templates. Mike raises a very good point regarding tentative resource bookings. This is something we also would love to be able to do. We have a resource management team who are chartered with the responsibility of deciding on resource allocations. They don't like anyone else making resource assignments (even regardless of project status). It would probably suit us very well if PMs and other managers could tentatively book preferred resources for their tasks (without the resources knowing) and then have these assignments go to the resource management team to review and then approve/change. For the moment, our process of requesting and booking resources is largely done through face-to-face meetings, phone calls, direct messages and emails. We did try a 'change request' process using the issue object, but this proved to be very clunky and was dropped. And yes, we do try to get PMs to assign Roles and then let the resource team find the appropriate resource, but inevitably they sometimes like to request specific resources and it would be nice if we had a tentative booking process to support that. David Cornwell

[AnthonyIm]

Hi, I think if you have it in the access level, that is the best. That way they would have Resource Planner rights for whichever groups they belong to. I would recommend that you have both an edit and view option for the resource planner so that we can give people the ability to see what is coming up without giving them permissions to adjust budgeted hours. And ideally, I'd love the view option to be available for people with Reviewer licences. Almost all of our executives are reviewers because they just look at things in Workfront and don't interact. So it would be great that they can see the resource planning for their group, without us having to give them a license they really don't need otherwise. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[MartyGa1]

First, I really like where the resource scheduling piece is going. Making great progress! I echo many of the sentiments already spoken. Restricting assignments to a named resource manager is cumbersome. I've seen more often a project manager making assignments. Restricting by access level makes sense. Perhaps also to Manage access on the project? One thing we've found is that many project managers / resource managers have dozens of projects going. Some in the system but not yet ready to go. Others leapfrogging the queue for a crisis deliverable. This means that when they go to select the projects in the ACTIONS area, it can take awhile to get the correct projects selected. A filter and multi-select capability would be great (e.g. all projects within a certain campaign/program). I also like the OPTION of having to confirm a resource for those organizations that have such structure. Making this a requirement could add a layer of formality that just doesn't exist in many organizations (or that the resource have already been committed in a staffing meeting). Marty Gawry - CapabilitySource

[VicAl]

Hi Vazgen, I think this would be a great improvement. Just today I had to remember to add myself as a Resource Manager on several projects just to look at Planning and Scheduling (and I'm not the true Resource Manager, I'm the Sys Admin). So this would be a great update. I'm not completely clear on the questions, but I'll answer as best I can: With Resource Manager prerequisite gone, how would you prefer to control access to Resource Management suite in Workfront? I'm not sure what is meant by the Resource Management Suite? Is it just the Planning and Scheduling tabs? Would you have different people accessing to Planning and Scheduling areas? I would allow all Planners (and of course Admins) to have access to both. They would find both of them useful. What levels of access would you like to set? I probably don't know enough about the security structure of this function to answer. Can you clarify or give choices? Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | IT | Sr. Technical Project Manager Denver Water | t: (303-628-7262) | c: (303-319-6473) "http://www.denverwater.org/"> http://www.denverwater.org INTEGRITY | VISION | PASSION | EXCELLENCE | RESPECT

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Thanks for the comments folks! To clarify, Resource Management suite refers to Planning and Scheduling tabs in this scenario. Great points on the access levels suggestion. One point about that is that this solution will not have a project-specific control, meaning that all projects will be equal and the same Resource Manager capabilities will be available to all the people with the appropriate access level on all of those projects. Like Marty mentioned, there may be dozens of projects going on at a given time in different stages and on some of them the project/resource manager might be a different person. Do you think this can cause confusion moving forward? For choices, we are still in research phase on that so any feedback you might have of potential solutions can be a valid choice :) Thanks, Vazgen

[AnthonyIm]

Hi Vazgen, Because we use the groups in Workfront for our different business units, the only restriction we'd want for the RM Access Level is that it only applies to groups they belong to (both Home Group and Other Groups). For us, Resource Managers are by discipline so they want to see all Creative or Development or Strategy resources across all projects for their business unit/group. Same thing with a view-only option. The executive wants to resource plans for their entire business unit so it is okay for us. Anthony Imgrund FCB

[VicAl]

If understand the functionality correctly you have to set a filter anyone (to display which projects you want to see). If so, that should limit confusion because you're instructing WF to display what you want. Or did I misunderstand? Vic Alejandro, PMP, CSM | IT | Sr. Technical Project Manager Denver Water | t: (303-628-7262) | c: (303-319-6473) "http://www.denverwater.org/"> http://www.denverwater.org INTEGRITY | VISION | PASSION | EXCELLENCE | RESPECT

[Kelly_Wehrmann]

I'm interested in following this discussion. We are not really using Planning or Scheduling right now because we are still trying to figure out how we fit and what is the best way to leverage this in our organization. We don't have any "Resource Managers" charged with staffing all of projects. Within our Group, we are setup by Functional Teams; resources within those teams have their own Functional Managers and in most cases, the Functional Managers are not Project Managers. Functional Managers try to schedule Service Request Work, based on each resource's available bandwidth; they have to take into consideration a resource's Project obligations and Support obligations. For the most part, our bigger / more critical projects are run by Project Managers that have no direct oversight of the resources or their work-load, outside of that PMs projects. When new projects are identified, discussions occur and resources from each functional area are identified based on the needs of that project. This includes having an "idea" of the % of time that a resource will be dedicated to that particular project (ex, 100%, 80%, 50%) in relation to their other work items (Service Request and Support Work) that are prioritized by their Functional Manager. There doesn't seem to be a good way to try to view/manage the Project commitments / allocations (from PMs) and commitments / allocations / availability for Service Request and Support Work (from Functional Managers) for each resource. As far as PMs go, I think it would be better, if possible, to let them have access to scheduling type features within the Task tab, versus going to the Scheduling tab. If they are already working on updating task information such as hours, dates, etc. it just seems more natural to have a one stop shop. Some Scheduling Tab suggestions: It seems that it would make it easier to use the Scheduling tab if there was an option to toggle on/off whether or not you wanted to display the other resources assigned to a task when you want to edit the hours at the day level. I could not find a way to adjust the planned hours here if I wanted or needed to. I had to go back to the task make a change on the task, then come back to scheduling and make the day changes here. I hope I'm missing something, but this just seemed like extra steps again. I'd like to be able to adjust all of the Tasks for a Resource at one time instead of having to expand a task to see the allocations, update the allocations, save it, and then expand the next task. Just seems like it makes the maintenance take longer. If I want to work on adjusting day by day scheduling on a task that spans beyond the max (6 weeks), I can't save my updates without ensuring that planned hours balance to the original planned hours before saving my change. So I have to enter hours to "pad" to my planned hours in order to save my changes. Then I have to change my time frame to look at the next 6 weeks, but I have to ensure that the first day I display is the last day I entered by "padded" hours. Maybe I'm not going about this the right way, but I'd sure like to get up to speed. When displaying all resources for a task that is expanded, sort the resource that you are currently working in to the top of the list. In instances where there are multiple resources assigned, the resource you are looking out on the left can be anywhere in that list. When displaying all resources for a task, provide an indicator to identify who the Default Assignee is. (Sample for #1 and #3 above) (Sample for #5 above) Planning Tab suggestions on Business Case: 1. If I attach a resource pool to that has more roles available then I plan on budgeting for this particular project, let me have the option to only display the ones that that I have budgeted hours for, instead of all of them. I'm interested in hearing if any way else has an organization setup similar to ours with Functional Managers and Project Managers and how they handle Projects, Requests, etc. Thanks! Admin Kelly-Wehrmann SSFCU

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Thanks for in-depth feedback everyone! One approach we were debating on, was having the access defined on the Resource Pool. That would allow to set up Resource Pool Managers who will be able to budget users for those Resource Pools and gain appropriate access to the Resource Planner. Conceptually this works really well with Resource Planner but not as much with Resource Scheduling since there is no reliance on Resource Pools there. Still, this approach will allow to keep project-specific control so there will be a way to say that a person can't alter budgeting on a project with resource pools they are not managers for. Global setting will be easier to set up but has a drawback that it will grant access to everyone with that access to all projects in the system. Filters can help to hide some of the projects from those users but those can be removed or edited and this might expose a project budgeting to people with no relation to that specific project. Is this concerning for you, or you manage that via project sharing in your organization (if a user has Manage access to a project, they can edit budgeting, if View - they can't)? Another question I want to ask is what do you think will be an ideal experience for you when accessing Resource Planner AND Resource Scheduling? Thanks, Vazgen Vazgen Babayan Workfront

[MikePe]

Hi @Vazgen Babayan Sorry to necro this thread, but I'm curious where you landed on this topic, as I'm currently investigating best practices for who should and should not be assigned as a resource manager within our organization, and if this feature will be departing soon, I'd like to save myself the time of putting together an assignment plan :) Mike Perez Tailored Brands

[Exp_-_VazgenBa]

Hi Mike, At this point, the work on this initiative is planned to start from early to mid 2019. More so, we will need to ensure that users who are currently assigned as Resource Managers will retain their access after our changes. So it's a safe bet to start assigning people as Resource Managers today. Thanks, Vazgen Babayan Product Manager Workfront

[SandraEl2]

Having purchased Workfront relatively recently, we've only been exposed to the new Resource Suite (no Legacy for us!). We have a resource management department that controls the schedules. Our PMs like to try to get as many hours for their projects as they can, to cover any what-ifs, and to offer alternate timelines to their clients. So our group makes sure everybody plays nice and there's enough to go around. It seems logical to me to have similar functionality between the Planner and the Scheduler (such as pools used in the Scheduler as well as the planner). Our organization is different in that the projects we resource are for external clients who have purchased our products/services. When we get the list of new projects, even before we have a PM assigned we need to do capacity planning, but this involves holding time on the resources' schedules, which we then fine-tune later as the external clients verify their timeline commitments. It'd be nice if the Planner can somewhat seamlessly feed over to the Scheduler. Sandra Ellaneous Thomson Reuters Elite