Making resource process with Smartsheet

Ive got to admit that I am new to this concept. I need to figure out how to set up resourcing in my organization.

It means that 12 teams who manage multiple project must also resource their work based on their team members allocation to that team.

At any given time I need to see what projects are "draining" a portfolios ability to take work, see who is overloaded and which team could possible afford to lend resources from theor team

i need to know if new priject requests coming in will cause the need to reprioritize the work for that team.

lol, if that wasn't enough, I'd like it to feed into our annual planNing process where we not only consider projects and resources but also which audiences we will be connecting with at any given point.

any ideas or best practices would be most gratefully accepted

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Comments

Jeremy Michels

The rescource managment is a link in the chain. It is not the only tool to use to complete the chain you are asking for. Web Forms are great to start the tracking process so that your work flows are tracked from the scource. This can populate the data needed to see who is doing the most requests and for what project. The assigned to column can be attached in the form so that the names populated are the same as your teams names. The same can be done for all areas that you want to track. Your rescource managment can then be engaged to see across the project and sheets that you have. To see the full pictures use reports to seek out the data to get the rest of the reports that you need for the review view. Also you can build a sheet as a time sheet to keep a record and track the amount of time spent per job. Again you can use reports to collect your review data.

PPS Solutions

HI, have you started to use the Resource Management features in Smartsheet yet? If so, you should at least be able to see which resources are "draining" capacity across the business. You might want to consider creating a seperate smartsheet to capture "resource requests" for new potential projects and their relative priority. Using a webform as Jeremy has suggested could assist with this to make the data capture of these resource requests easier and more consistent. Once you then add in the "resource request" smartsheet into your Resource Management custom view then you have the ability to view Live work alongside proposed work. Consider then exporting that view into Excel so you can "crunch" various scenarios offline and then approve agreed new projects and create the new Live smartsheets to add them into the Live portfolio. Having done that, remove the corresponding proposed resource request from the resource request smartsheet.

Also, factor in people's holidays and unavailability by creating a Non availability sheet and creating task rows to represent people's unavailiability. This will help keep your resource pool capacity realistic.

Yves V

Doing portfolio Management with Smartsheet would be a challenge for sure but there are component of it that may be available through SS with a bit of setup and tricks:

1A. Intake/demand Process (Collecting the portfolio component candidates & related resource requirement including resource)

=> Web form(s)

1B. Selecting and balancing portfolio component to optimize strategic fit and ROI

=> Sheet with formula and check box (semi automated process)

2. Awareness of resource current usage

=> Setup of the resource management functionalities of SS conditional to Project plans of inflight and authorized projects are available and updated with the right assignation. I would highly recommend to work with maximum 50% of allocations depending on your organization structure (mine is balanced matrix and is frequenctly loading tons of projects on each fucntional resource)

3. Resource management optimization and conflicts resolution.

This one is the most tricky one. I've been trying to develop a automatic conflicst resolution system using easy-insight add on which read specifically formated Smartsheet rows; results is not that bad but it does not automate the solution to resolve the conflict, but show you in a graphical way potential conflicst for the various scenarios you are willing to experiment.

The ideal if you want to integrate all things together is of course a dedicated PPM tool... but if you don't have the budget or the desire to start that project , smartsheet and easy insight would probably make a good cheap alternative...

Hope this overview helps.