Resource Mgmt process based on Skills & need Resource Availability

[Tennessee]

(It was suggested that I post this question to the Server group.)

I'm trying to establish a Resource Management process.

Enterprise resources have Skills assigned to them (i.e. John Smith has ABAP
and Database Administration skills). However, when initially scheduling a
project and allocating resouces to a project, I want to be able to schedule
by Skill (i.e. I need an ABAP resource for 40 hours for this task) instead of
by specific person. (Should I be using Generic resources for this?)

**Once projects have been scheduled at the Skill level, I need to be able to
run / create Resource Availability graphs for these Skills and see where we
are under and/or over capacity. <-- This data needs to be based on Skills
that are scheduled, the availability of the resources that have those Skills,
as well as any specific assignments / tasks the resources may already have.**

Is this possible in EPM version 2002? If so, could someone please point me
in the right direction to accomplish this? If not, does the latest version
of EPM (2007) have this capability? I need to know if we can accomplish
this now (and how to get started), or if we need to explore an upgrade to get
where we need to be.


Thanks in advance for your assistance!!
(Using Ms Project Pro 2002, Project Web Access, and Server 2002)

 

[Ben Howard]

Hi,
you should use generic resources for the initial skills assignment. That
way you can then run an OLAP cube report that shows the skills demand for the
future (filtering on skill and generica resources), across projects and by
time etc.

Then you'll need to create a view for each skill (as above, plus also all
resources, and filter by skill). However, you need to have an awareness of
how many resources have each skill (that gives you total availability or
capacity), but if a resource has two skills then this can get confusing. So,
the views need to be read with a knowledge of the resources and skill sets in
house, but this is what a RM would do anyway.

You can also customise the OLAP views to add in calculated fields, or export
to Excel to link in with other data.

If you want to take into account resource availability, eg holidays etc,
then you'll need to modify the resource calendars.

2007 gives some other views but essentially works the same way.