New functionality has been added in FCC for capacity planning and resource scheduling. Resource scheduling could already be done in FCC using resource pools.
- Capacity Planning: from 3 months up to 3 years ahead
If you want insight into capacity far ahead (years), then you do that from the Portfolio and by skill and/or teams (not individuals). You look at capacity on the basis of a global planning of portfolio items and rough estimates of hours.
This approach helps, for example, when drawing up annual plans and making analyses about the possibility of tackling certain changes in the coming years. It also prevents starting too many projects in advance without (roughly) sufficient capacity. Because starting projects has to do with prioritization, the discussion about this should also be conducted within the Portfolio. Long-term insight into the availability of skills and/or teams is essential. - Resource Planning: from 3 months to 1.5 years ahead
If you include the Project Dynamics, you get a more accurate (capacity) planning from the projects. This allows, on the one hand, to feed the capacity planning from the Portfolio between 3 months and 1.5 years in more detail and actuality and, on the other hand, to give input to ‘Resource Scheduling’ for specific deployment of individuals in the short term (0 to 3 months). - Resource Scheduling: from 0 to 3 months ahead
If you want accurate insight into the deployment of individuals on both the change tasks and line work, leave, training etc., then you start working with resource pools. Best practice is that this works well for the short term: 0 to 3 months ahead. Typical here is a request and allocation process: request by the project manager from the project and allocation by the line manager from the resource pool. If you combine this with timekeeping, it creates a learning organization: how many hours planned for whom à what is actually written à what can we learn from this to plan even better in the future.
The scheduling grid in FCC works very intuitively and looks like this:
Look here for more information on the new capacity planning functionality. We are happy to show you the possibilities. Click here to schedule a demo appointment.
