Capacity planning

The budget or resource supply may not fully meet the demand for all the contents in a scenario. What-if analysis enables you to explore possible solutions for narrowing the gap.

In this topic:

Analyze capacity utilization

What-if analysis provides constraint indicators such as Budget Remaining and Resource Remaining to analyze resource and budget utilization.

To analyze the capacity utilization:

1. Open a scenario's details page.

2. At the top-right of the page, select Strategic Planning Gantt View.

3. The Budget Remaining and Resource Remaining tables display how much budget and resources remain after being allocated to the moved-in contents in the scenario.

4. To see the capacity and demand, click the down-arrow next to Budget Remaining.

   

Calculate remaining, capacity, and demand

The following table describes how capacity, demand, and remaining of each time period is calculated.

Constraint	Details
Budget	Capacity of each period. Calculated by equally dividing the portfolio's approved for a specific year into 12 monthly periods or 4 quarterly periods. The period type is configured in the layout template settings. For details, see Period Type Setting. Demand of each period. Calculated by summing the forecast costs of all moved-in contents within the corresponding time period. Budget remaining = capacity of each period - demand of each period
Resources	Capacity of each period. Manually entered in the table. See Provide resource capacity. Demand of each period. Calculated by summing the forecast effort from the staffing profiles of all moved-in contents within the corresponding time period. Resource remaining = capacity of each period - demand of each period

Provide resource capacity

The resource capacity is manually entered in the Resource Constraint table.

To enter the resource capacity:

1. Next to Resource Remaining, click the down arrow to expand the Capacity row.
2. In each cell corresponding to the time period, enter the capacity value for that specific period.

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Reschedule contents

When you find budget or resource remaining values are negative in some periods but positive in other periods, you can try shifting the start date of a content if you have no plan to increase budget or resource capacity.

To shift the content start date:

1. Open a scenario's details page.

2. At the top-right of the page, select a layout template that contains the Board View or Hierarchy Gantt View component type. For details, see Switch scenario layout templates.

   

   Contents whose time periods fall within the scenario time period are represented as a Gantt chart. The Gantt chart can be customized to display either resource or cost data for each period, providing a clear understanding of the resource or budget demand for the contents at each time interval.

   Curved lines on the left of the Gantt indicate that contents start earlier than the scenario start period; while curved lines on the left of the Gantt indicate that contents finish later than the scenario end period.

3. To start work earlier, drag the Gantt of a content leftward. To postpone work, drag the Gantt rightward. The original time period is presented in a lighter shade.

   If a program has contents, shifting the program's start date would shift the start date of all its contents accordingly. Shifting all its content's starting date would shift the program's start date accordingly.

4. (Optional and available in 24.2 and later versions) When adjusting the schedule, a color change in the dependency icon indicates dependency violations. Hover over the icon to view details and make necessary adjustments. For details, see View dependencies.

5. Click Save to save the changes made to the scenario.

6. If you want to discard time period changes made to the scenario, click Restore.

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Apply time period changes to portfolio

If shifting content start date reduces the capacity-demand gap, you can apply these changes to the portfolio.

To apply time period changes to portfolio:

1. Open a scenario's details page.

2. At the top-right of the page, click Apply.

3. The Time Period Changes section in the Apply preview for scenario page displays the proposed time period changes.

4. Review the proposed modifications and select the portfolio contents where you want to implement the new time periods.

5. Click Apply at the top-right of the page.

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See also:

• Strategic planning