Resource Management in Dynamics Project Operations - Will it fly?

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT DEFINITIONS

Depending on who you ask resource management can mean different things.

Imagine you are a director or a manager at a professional services firm charged with a task of improving resource management in your organisation.

Sooner or later, you will realise that in order to have a meaningful conversation about resource management you need to decide what it means in the first place. Maybe it is about:

·????????Capacity Planning: how many new Business Analysts we need next quarter,

·????????Resource Allocation: who is going to work on the remainder of work on project Alpha now that Priya is busy with project Beta,

·????????Resource Scheduling: who is going to provide the AI training to Customer Zeta on 01.02.2022 now that Tom is sick with Omicron,

·????????Time Tracking: help make sure that Maher, Anna, and other consultants have tracked all hours spent on their projects, so that all they can be billed swiftly and without errors,

·????????Personal Work Management: how can we help Leila to plan work on projects Beta, Gamma, and work on Business as Usual and ensure she does not leave due to overwork.

RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: PROMISE OF ONE SINGLE VERSION OF TRUTH

Professional Services Automation systems (PSA) such as Dynamics Project Operations (ProjOps) and Project Portfolio Management (PPM) systems such as Project for the Web (P4W) offer a promise of one single version of truth for most resource management challenges. Can they fulfill that promise?

If you are after that holy grail of one single version of truth for both resource allocation, and resource scheduling, and additionally for personal work management ProjOps and P4W may not fulfill all your requirements. Do not get me wrong. ProjOps adds a lot of value in a number of areas: project planning, estimation, quoting, subcontracting (new), revenue forecasting, capacity planning (with Power BI), resource allocation, progress tracking, time tracking and approval, write-offs, and billing but Universal Resource Scheduling that ProjOps uses for resource scheduling was not designed with needs of professional services firms in mind.

RESOURCE ALLOCATION BLISS

Managing resources is hard at the best of times. Would not it be nice to have one resource allocation and resource scheduling area that Project Managers, Consultants, Resource Managers (if you are happy to have them) use to review and plan who is doing what. You could start from a multi-year or a yearly view (used for capacity planning), switch to a quarterly view (used for resource allocation), and zoom to weekly, daily, and hourly views (for resource scheduling and personal work management). All data would roll up nicely and there would be no days where Mark is planned 1.77h on project Gamma. On the same screen Project Managers could update their project plans and the system would check availability, highlight, and automatically resolve any conflicts, and directly rebook resources. By that time, you will have reached Nirvana.

RESOURCE ALLOCATION HURDLES AND HOW TO BEAT THEEM

Is this vision achievable? Only partially. It is due to a number of reasons. First is the domino-effect: if one project manager or one resource manager does not keep the information up-to-date the whole system gets out of whack pretty quickly. Second is different granularity of resource allocation and resource scheduling: some PMs schedule resources on tasks that last months and some on tasks that last weeks, days or half-days. These difficulties are hard to overcome due to different project management styles and different levels of project management maturity in different parts of the company. Can we try to solve this conundrum? I would start by tackling the second issue and agreeing on a common denominator in granularity for resource allocation and resource scheduling that’s palatable to Consultants, PMs, and Resource Managers alike: such as one week. Only then we can look at how to implement this process in ProjOps. The first issue highlighted above (domino effect) will need to be tackled gradually as project management and resource management maturity increase.

RESOURCE ALLOCATION IN DYNAMICS PROJECT OPERATIONS: ALTERNATIVE APPROACH

I am going to focus here on companies that have defined requirements in resource allocation and resource scheduling areas. I am going to suggest a new approach how to meet many of these requirements using standard ProjOps without building a replacement for Schedule Board (that many companies find not fit for purpose).

I am NOT going to go through all out-of-the-box processes in ProjOps for project team members, resource assignments, resource requirements, resource requests, and resource bookings. I am going to assume that the reader is familiar with these standard processes. Consult Microsoft Docs at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dynamics365/project-operations/resource-management/resource-management-key-concepts to learn more.

In this approach PM starts by defining the WBS and assigns contact-based resources such as ‘Business Analyst Contact’ or ‘Joe Doe Contact’ to each of WBS tasks. These contact-based resources are ignored in any company-wide resource allocation (they do not appear on Schedule Board and are excluded from reports).

Then PM defines an additional node in the WBS specifically for resource allocation. She creates a task such as ‘Business Analyst 20h/week 31.01.22-03.04.22’ and assigns a generic resource with BA role to that task. The system automatically creates a team member (standard) and a requirement (with configuration). PM may add a preferred resource to the requirement. Then she follows the OOTB process to request a resource. Resource Manager receives the request, consults the Schedule Board, and books the resource such as Priyanka Gupta.

Note: When the ability to edit resource assignment contours in Project Operations becomes available later in 2022, the PM will be able to specify number of hours for each week using the Estimates tab e.g. to work around public holidays or other existing commitments. Until then, PM may instead need to create two tasks e.g. ‘Business Analyst 24h/week 31.01.22-27.02.22’ and ‘Business Analyst 16h/week 28.02.22-03.04.22’.

RESOURCE ALLOCATION AND RESOURCE SCHEDULING ON ONE SCREEN IN DYNAMICS PROJECT OPERATIONS

In the main WBS node for each task PM can see resource scheduling information: in the Resource column she can see ‘Business Analyst Contact’ that she may replace with ‘Priyanka Gupta Contact’. In the additional WBS node she can find resource scheduling information: she can see that ‘Priyanka Gupta’ is booked on task ‘Business Analyst 20h/week 31.01.22-03.04.22’.

In this scenario it is the PM who is tasked with a difficult task of balancing resource scheduling and resource allocation data.

Two weeks pass and PM needs to update project tasks. When she does, resource assignments for ‘Priyanka Gupta Contact’ will be also modified. PM consults the Schedule Board to check availability of ‘Priyanka Gupta’. When PM is ready with her tasks’ changes, she updates the ‘Business Analyst 20h/week 31.01.22-03.04.22’ task. She changes Effort and Duration of the task and renames it to ‘Business Analyst 32h/week 31.01.22-27.03.22’. Then she follows the OOTB process: re-generates the requirement, and requests a resource (asking for the same one as so far). Resource Manager receives the request, consults the Schedule Board, and updates the resource booking (he may cancel the existing booking first and then create a new one).

The example I have provided here is simplistic. We know that many projects have hundreds of tasks and tens of resources. As the process requires cross-checking data between the main WBS node, the additional WBS node, and the Schedule Board, I would say that it is best suited to scenarios with up to 20 resources. I assume here that we assign 1 resource per task, otherwise resource scheduling and resource allocation will become even more difficult.

FINAL REMARKS

I would not recommend implementing a resource allocation process in ProjOps in the first phase of your project. It depends on resource management maturity but a rule of thumb is that you should get good user adoption of project planning, estimation, quoting, progress tracking, time tracking and approvals before you embark on the resource allocation improvement journey. And do expect choppy waters when you set sail.

This article is based on my own experiences implementing resource allocation solutions on Dynamics CE: using URS, third party products for Dynamics CE, and other tools. It has also been inspired by many articles, blog posts, and videos posted by members of Resource Management Institute at: https://resourcemanagementinstitute.com and members of our online Dynamics Project Operations and P4W communities.

You may be interested in two previous articles on resource management I have written that can be easily found at: https://promx.net/en/2020/09/project-operations-resource-management/ and https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/resource-management-dynamics-psa-project-operations-4-lazowski/.

You can also find relevant information on websites of Microsoft Partners specialising in Professional Services Automation solutions (such as Dynamics Project Operations) and in Project Portfolio Management solutions (such as Project Online and P4W). A number of interesting videos can also be found on YouTube. I would like to point your attention to an interesting one I viewed recently entitled ‘AAE Webinar: Resource Management Maturity’ presented by Marc Soester that played a part in inspiring me to write this article. You can find it at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8Gc637fFXA.?

Good luck and please get in touch by posting comments and contacting me directly!