Project Scenario Overview
This article provides an overview of scenarios.
What is a Scenario?
A scenario can be thought of as a sandbox where you can develop different portfolio and resource plans without affecting the current, real plan and forecast. A scenario contains a copy of one or more projects with or without all labor and financial assignments.
After scenario planning is complete, the scenario can be “posted” to the current plan. Scenario projects and assignments replace the projects and assignments in the current plan EXCEPT for new assignments created on current plan projects after the scenario was created.
If you choose not to include all assignments, you can later add assignments to the scenario individually.
All project fields and all labor and financial forecasting features of ResourceFirst are available for planning within the scenario.
This planning has no effect on the source projects.
When planning in the scenario is complete, the scenario can be posted back to the current plan.
Scenario project fields overwrite source project values;
Labor and financial assignment values overwrite source assignment values;
New assignments in the scenario are added to the source project
New assignments on original, current forecast projects added after scenario creation remain untouched after Post.
Scenarios contain projects; assignments are included in scenarios by virtue of being on scenario projects.
Example Scenario Use Cases (TBA)
The following are examples of scenarios with different characteristics based on unique use cases:
A Single Project
A new project has been added to the portfolio and you don’t want labor and financial forecasts to affect current plan totals until the project is approved.
Initiate the project and immediately create a private scenario from it. Share access to the scenario if other users need to participate in the planning.
All planning of project attributes and labor and financial forecasts occurs in the scenario.
An Entire Program with Sub-Projects
An ongoing, major program is approaching a critical phase gate. In preparation for the phase gate review, you want to do forward planning in a scenario.
You select the root program-project and create a private scenario that includes all child projects and all assignments, labor and financial.
You share access to the scenario with all users who need to participate in the planning OR you make the scenario public.
One Functional Area
As the resource manager of a shared services organization, you have been asked to provide a staffing plan (headcount by skill) that would reduce your backlog by 75%.
You select all projects in your queue, current and pending, and create a private or public scenario including children and assignments.
You plan the staffing for 75% of the pending projects, turn off your current plan projects, and capture the staff shortfall by skill on the scenario plan.
Entire Organization
As a business unit or profit center you are to prepare the annual two year Operating Plan.
You select all current projects and create a public scenario including children and assignments.
You initiate all projects or placeholders expected to start over the two year plan and add them to the scenario.
This scenario is not posted in its entirety. Individual projects may be posted if approved.
Data Entry/Edit Operations in Scenarios
Users can modify or add to scenarios in the following ways:
Project attributes (field values) can be modified.
Demand on scenario assignments can be moved, modified, or deleted.
Labor and Financial Assignments can be added to scenario projects.
Assignments can be deleted from scenarios but that has NO effect on the current plan when the scenario is posted.
Replace the scenario demand with zero values before posting to remove current plan demand.
Additional Projects can be added to scenarios.
New projects cannot be created in scenarios; scenario projects can only be created from existing projects (even if they are “dummy” placeholder projects to start with).
To create a new scenario project, either create a new shell project on the Project Data page and add it to the scenario, or add an existing “live” project to the scenario.
Access Rights and Scenarios
The creator of a scenario is its Owner.
The Owner of a scenario can grant read or owner rights to other users.
Users can read or modify only those elements of a scenario for which they have sufficient rights.
Scenario owners can modify ANY assignment they can see in the scenario.
When they post the scenario, modified assignments they have read-only rights to are ignored.
Users can create scenarios that include data they have limited or no rights to.
Note: If you delete a source project, ALL scenario copies of the project will be deleted with ALL their assignments.
