Using Staffing Profiles: General Walkthrough

When putting together a project, the project manager should create a staffing profile, which allows her to plan resource usage for that project. Each line in the staffing profile represents a position for a resource with a specific role that needs to be filled. When the project manager is finished making her resource usage forecasts, she sends them to the resource manager as resource requests from her staffing profile. Each resource request is submitted against a specific resource pool. See Send resource requests from a staffing profile for more details on this process.

The resource manager receives these resource requests as alerts on the Resource Pool Overview page for a resource pool he manages, and proceeds to the relevant staffing profile or Resource Allocation Management page to begin making assignments. The Resource Request portlet can also be configured to display resource requests across resource pools. See Assign resource pool resources for more details on this process.

Note: A resource must be in a resource pool in order to be assigned to a staffing profile. By default, only the resource pool manager (or a manager of a parent resource pool) is permitted to make that assignment. To allow a project manager to assign any resource (from any resource pool) to a work plan, staffing profile, or both, set the RM_OVERRIDE_ASSIGNMENT_CONTROLS parameter in the server.conf file on the PPM Server to TRUE.

Once assignments have been made and the project has been started, the project manager can begin providing actual effort amounts into staffing profile positions. The project can also be configured to roll up actual effort amounts from the work plan into the staffing profile as work is completed. See the Project Management User’s Guide for more detailed information on configuring project settings.