Creating inventory of available staff for staff allocation scenarios

The first step in performing any resource demand or allocation is to identify and forecast any resources that might be available in your organization for a specified time period. You can use the resource availability feature of BMC IT Business Management Suite to create an inventory of available and planned resources for your organization. You can specify the amount of time each resource might spend on project or sustaining tasks. You can specify workload for not only existing people in your organization but also for planned resources that might join the organization later. This ensures that the planned resources are reflected in the allocation planning of resources.

The planned resources that you add as available staff are for forecasting purposes only. All users with permission to view the resources can view the additional planned resources. The resources are not added as IT Staff in BMC Remedy AR System. Additionally the planned resources are added for the fiscal year that you have selected. They are not carried over to any other fiscal year. You can delete planned resources at any time if required.

Note

The planned resource you add as available staff is not the same as when you specify an IT staff member as a planned resource in the Edit IT Staff Member window. You use the Edit IT Staff Member window to mark the user profile of an IT staff member that exists in BMC Remedy AR System. It is used for budgeting purposes only.

You need specific permissions to be able to use the staff availability feature. You can create an inventory of available staff for your organizational unit if you have the ITBM Staff Availability User Permission. With the ITBM Staff Availability Viewer permission, you can view the available staff. With the ITBM Resource Mgmt Office and ITBM Staff Availability User permission, you can view and edit staff availability for all organizational units.

For more information on adding permissions, see Permissions.

To create an inventory of available staff for staff allocation scenarios

  1. In the left navigation pane of the main BMC IT Business Management window, click on the Staff Availability option.
     The Staff Availability window is displayed in a new browser tab. The Staff Availability window displays the organizational units in the left navigation pane.
  2. From the list of organizational units, select the organizational unit for which you need to specify the resource data.
     You can use the Search option to search for a particular organizational unit.
     The right pane of the Staff Availability window displays all the IT Staff associated with the selected organizational unit.
  3. In the right pane, select the fiscal year for which you need to specify the resource availability data.
  4. In the Hours Type 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 Hours Type field and specify 2 in the resource table, it is equivalent to 336 (168 + 168) hours of resource availability.
    By default, BMC IT Business management Suite uses the value of 1 for each full time resource. That means for each resource, you can specify the availability for project and non-project work for a total of 1. If needed, you can update this value to reflect the data used in your organization. To change the value, change the value of the FTE_AVAILABILITY_Value 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.
    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 Hours type 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.
  5. In the month column in the row corresponding to the name of a resource, click in a cell and specify the time that the resource is available for projects or sustaining tasks.
    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.
  6.  (Optionally) To add a planned resource, click on the Add Planned Resource option.
    A planned resource is staff that is currently not available in the organization but is planned to be available as required.
    To add planned resources, complete the following steps:
    1. In the Name field of the New Planned Resource window, specify the name of the resource.
    2. In the Job Family field, select a job family for the resource.
    3. In the Job Category field, select a job category for the resource.
    4. In the Numbers field, select the total number of resources that you would like to add.
      If you specify more than 1 number of resources, the application creates the first resource with the name that you specify and then adds a numeric suffix to the name for subsequent resources. For example, if you specify RS1 as the name of the resource and specify 3 resources to be created, the application creates the resources with names RS1, RS11 and RS12.
  7. (Optionally) To rename a resource, click on the name of the resource and specify a new name.
  8. (Optionally) To search for a specific resource, in the Filter Resources field, specify the search criteria.
  9. (Optionally) To show resources that directly report to you, select the Show direct staff check box.
     By default, the application displays all resources that belong to your organizational unit. You can use the Show direct staff option to only display the resources that report directly to you and hide the others.
  10. To specify data for all resources, repeat step 5 as required.
  11. Click on the Save icon.

 

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