Estimating Resources

A user that belongs to project management office (PMO) or project manager can use the Estimate resource option in the project lifecycle to identify the resource requirements for a project. The resource requirement is defined in terms of job family and job category. IT staff is always linked to a job family and category. That means you can identify the type of resource required by selecting the job family and specify the number of resources required for that job family. You can also classify the job family by selecting a job category in a job family.

A portfolio manager uses the resource estimates to plan and forecast resource requirements and assignments. For more information on using estimated resources for portfolio planning, see Resource-forecasting.

To estimate resources for a project

1. In the Project Details window, click on the Estimate Resources option.
    The Estimate Resources option is the second option in the Definition phase of the project.
2. In the Planned Start field, select the start of time period for which you need to estimate resources.
    By Default, the project start date is displayed in this field. You can choose any date after the project start date.
3. In the Planned End field, select the end of the time period for which you need to estimate resources.
    By default, the project end date is displayed in this field. You can choose any date before the project end date.
4. Click Apply.
5. In the Work Unit field, select FTE or Man Days.
    FTE is full time employee. The application assumes one FTE equivalent to 8 hours of availability each day for 21 days in a month. That means 1 FTE is equal to a total of 168 hours of resource availability for a month. For example, if you select FTE in the Work Unit field and specify 2 in the resource table, it is equivalent to 336 (168 + 168) hours of resource availability.
   Man Days is equal to 8 hours of availability each day. Assuming there are 21 working days in a month, 21 man days are equivalent to 168 hours of availability in a month. For example if you select Man Days in the Work Unit field, and specify 2 in the resource table, it is equivalent to 16 (8+8) hours of availability.
    By default, BMC IT Business management Suite sets 1 FTE equal to 21 man days. If needed, you can update this value to reflect the data used in your organization. To change the FTE to man days value, change the value of the FTE_TO_MAN_DAYS configuration parameter in the advance administrative interface at http://<hostname>:<port>/itm/magick.do, where hostname is the server where BMC IT Business Management Suite is installed and port is the port number of the application server.
6. To add a row in the resource estimate table, click on the Choose Job Family option.
7. In the Job Family column, select a job family.
    You can add or edit job families and job categories in BMC IT Business Management Suite. For more information on job families, see Job-families.
8. (Optional) In the Job Category column, select the classification of the job family.
9. (Optional) In the Description column, specify a description of the required resource.
    You can specify up to 255 characters in this field.
10. In the months columns, specify the number of resources.
     After you specify a value in a cell, you can right-click to select the Fill Right or Distribute Right option. The Fill Right option repeats the value in that cell in all the cells to the right of the selected cell. The Distribute Right option evenly distributes the amount between the selected cell and all the cells to the right of the selected cell.
     The application sums up the all values that you specify in the months columns and displays the total as total man days in the Total-Man Days column.
11. Repeat steps 4 to 7 to add values for additional job categories.
12. Click the Save icon.
     If you change the window or switch to other tasks in the project cycle without saving the changes, the application defaults to last saved value.