Demand and resource management enhancements

The following enhancements are included in this release:

• • Added ability to create hierarchy of projects and programs as programs
  • Enhanced interface for managing project financials
  • Added ability to specify same project name as a business case
  • Added flex fields for projects
  • Added field to provide description of the required resource
  • Added ability to specify project start and end dates
  • Added configuration parameter to specify value for availability of full time resource
  • Improved visibility of total man days in resource estimate, staff availability and staff scenarios
  • Added ability to create and manage approver templates
  • Enhanced editing of project lifecycle templates
  • Added ability to switch project lifecycle template
  • New portlet added for project portfolio cost analysis

Added ability to create hierarchy of projects and programs as programs

IT organizations often have numerous IT projects that are large and complex. To better analyze and plan for these types of projects organizations often look to divide the overall project into a series of smaller and related sub-programs or sub-projects. Each sub-project typically has its own schedule, budget, and project manager or project lead. For a project or portfolio manager, it is important to have an overall view of the project as well as sub-projects.

The Program functionality in BMC Demand and Resource Management was enhanced to provide the ability to create programs to provide a hierarchical view of projects. Additionally, you can create hierarchical programs and include them in a bigger parent program.

You can manage programs for the following benefits:

• Provide a top-down view of the sub-projects and sub-programs involved in a program.
• Provide an interface where related projects can be nested and grouped into a hierarchy.
• Provide ability to process a hierarchical program as a project in BMC IT Business Management Suite.
• Support rollup of budget and actual costs in a hierarchy of projects and programs.
• Support comparison of rollup costs with the budget goals for the parent program.

To create a program, you can use the Program option in the left navigation bar of the main BMC IT Business Management Suite. A project or a hierarchical program can be part of a single hierarchical program at a given time.

Enhanced interface for managing project financials

In BMC Demand and Resource Management, you can create multiple revisions of project budgets and track actual costs against budget. As a portfolio manager or finance manager, you might need to view and manage all data related to project budgets in one common interface. That way you can quickly perform data comparison, generate reports and set default budgets that you would like to use for your project(s). The managing project financials feature was enhanced to provide a common user interface to view and mange all budget data related to a project. The Financials tab in the Project Details window now displays all project budgets with the line items and the ability to add or edit any budget line item. Additionally, when you select the Budget Details option in any of your project budget pane in Project Details window, the software displays the corresponding budget details in the Financials tab.

Added ability to specify same project name as a business case

When you promote a business case to a project in BMC IT Business Management Suite, you can now specify the name of the project identical to that of the business case. In previous releases, a user could not create a project with the same name of a project that already existed irrespective of the project template used. With this release, if the project template is different, the projects can have the same names. This helps in comparing and identifying the projects that were generated using a business case.

Added flex fields for projects

BMC IT Business Management Suite now provides additional flex fields in the BMC Demand and Resource Management module for managing projects. The following table shows the number of new fields added along with fields that already existed and total available in this release:

Flex Field	New	Existing	Total
Code table	0	5	5
Description	2	3	5
String	8	8	16
Date	2	10	12

Added field to provide description of the required resource

You can now specify description of each resource when you estimate resources required for the duration of the project. This helps in keeping a record of any details related to a resource requirement. The following column was added to the Estimate Resources table in the Project Details window:

• Description

Added ability to specify project start and end dates

The project start/end date are required fields for both projects and programs. the project/program start/end dates are used when entering estimated resources, budget financials and program budget goals

You can now specify start and end dates for the projects and Programs that you add or manage using BMC Demand and Resource Management. The project start and end dates are used to define the time period for which you can estimate resources for your project, generate budget financials and set program budget goals.
 The following fields were added to the New Project Overview, Edit Project Overview, New Program Overview and Edit Program Overview windows:

• Start Date
• End Date

Added configuration parameter to specify value for availability of full time resource

When you specify available staff in BMC Demand and Resource management, by default, the software 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. Now you can update this value to reflect the data used in your organization. The following configuration parameter was added to the advance administrative interface:

• FTE_AVAILABILITY_VALUE

You can access 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.

Improved visibility of total man days in resource estimate, staff availability and staff scenarios

The Total-Man Days column in BMC Demand and Resource Management windows displays the sum total of man days that you have specified for a resource. This column was moved from the end of the table to the beginning to provide better visibility to the total number of man days. The column is now visible before the columns for the months. The Total-Man Days column was moved in the following forms:

• Estimate Resources
• Staff Availability
• Staff Scenario

Added ability to create and manage approver templates

You can now configure approver templates with a specified set of users that can be used repeatedly for multiple projects. Additionally if you need to replace or add an approver, you can update an approver template and the updated template is then available for all projects that need the updated set of approvers. You can create approver templates to associate with project lifecycle templates or with individual projects.
 When you initiate approval requests for your projects, approvers from all approval templates associated with your project are included in the approval process.

Enhanced editing of project lifecycle templates

You use project lifecycle templates in BMC Demand and Resource Management to create new projects. In previous releases when you used a project template to create a project, the project template was locked and not open to further edits. With expanding organizations and changes in processes, often there is a need to update the existing template. The update to the template can be for any new projects that you create and for all existing projects. The edit feature of project lifecycle template was enhanced to enable you to update the template even after it is in use in existing project(s). You can edit the template for the following values:

• Add new phases to the lifecycle.
• Add new tasks to the phases.
• Reorder tasks or phases.
• Delete tasks or phases from the lifecycle.

When you update existing templates, the software provides an option to apply the changes only to new projects or to apply them to both existing and new projects. If a phase or tasks is already complete in an existing project, the software does not apply the changes to those phases or tasks. The software does not update any cancelled or completed projects.

Added ability to switch project lifecycle template

When you create a new project in BMC IT Business Management Suite, you select a project template to define the lifecycle phases of your project. In some cases, you might need to move or switch your ongoing project to a new template. BMC Demand and Resource Management now includes a feature for switching the project template even after you have already started a project and completed some of the stages or phases of the project.

New portlet added for project portfolio cost analysis

Portfolio managers can use a summary of budgeted and actual cost of the portfolios to view and compare the cost of portfolios that they are managing. BMC IT Business Management Suite now provides the following portlet:

• Project Portfolio Cost Analysis

Similar to other portlets, you can use the Personalize option in the Home page to display the new portlet.