Skills Analysis

This article shows the Skills Analysis feature, which lets you view utilization and shortfall at a skill level.

Overview

ResourceFirst includes a powerful Skills Analysis tool to view utilization, demand, capacity, and variance by skill. To get to this page, click the Skills Analysis link in the Resource area.

A few things to understand about what you see:

• The data set analyzed is limited to the filter settings specified in your main Global Funnel  Filter (found on the top of the page in the blue ribbon,  ). What this mean is that if you are filtering for your organization’s projects and resources for this calendar year, you see the capacity and demand within your organization across the primary skills possessed by the resources you have filtered for in this calendar year. If you have a new skill starting at the beginning of the following year, that information will not show because your Get Data Filter is set to only present this year’s data.
• Utilization is expressed as the percentage of the demand for the skill (whether or not it has been allocated), compared to the capacity of all resources having that skill. [(Demand / Capacity)*100]
• Only primary skills are used in the calculations. Should a resource also be associated with secondary/tertiary skills, those are not considered as part of the capacity value.

Note: This option shows how you are leveraging your primary skills. For a full analysis of assignments by skill, including secondary skill assignments, you would need to go to the Assignment Roll-up option in the PMO section and define Required Skill as your roll-up hierarchy field. See Roll-Up Reports for more.

A few examples highlighting this page’s business rules

Example 1: A project has a demand for 1 project manager. Larry, a project manager, is assigned to the project. If this were the only project and skill demand, the project manager skill would show 100% with no color, meaning that the demand for the project manager skill (one project with a demand for 1 FTE project manager) is matched by the capacity for the project manager skill (one resource that has the primary skill of project manager.)

Example 2: Two projects each have a demand for 1 project manager. Larry, a project manager, is assigned to Project A as the project manager. Project B’s project manager has yet to be identified. If Larry were the only project manager in the organization, the project manager skill would show 200% in red, meaning that the demand for the project manager skill (two projects each with a demand for 1 FTE project manager) is not matched by the capacity for the skill (only one resource in the organization has the primary skill of project manager.)

Example 3a: Two projects each have a demand for 1 project manager. Larry, a project manager, is assigned to Project A as the project manager. Project B’s project manager has yet to be identified. In this example, let’s say the organization has a second person, Mary, who has a primary skill as a project manager. Because the Skills Analysis page only considers primary skills, Mary’s capacity is considered resulting in the project manager skill showing 200% in white, meaning that the demand for this skill (two projects each with a demand for 1 FTE project manager) is matched by the capacity for the skill (two resources each with project manager as their primary skill.)

Example 3b: Two projects each have a demand for 1 project manager. Larry, a project manager, is assigned to Project A as the project manager. Project B’s project manager has yet to be identified. In this example, let’s say the difference from Example 3a is that Mary has a primary skill as a QA Manager and has a secondary skill as a project manager. Because the Skills Analysis page only considers primary skills, Mary’s capacity is not considered as a project manager. The result is the project manager skill would show 200% in red, meaning that the demand for the project manager skill (two projects each with a demand for 1 FTE project manager) is not matched by the capacity for the skill (only one resource has a primary skill of project manager.)

Selecting Data Type: Demand – Capacity – Variance – % Utilization

In the upper left dropdown, you can cycle through Demand – Capacity – Variance – % Utilization. When you land on this page, % Utilization is the default.

Key to Highlights

The color thresholds are set by the administrator for all users.

Red indicates over-utilized. Said differently: There is more demand for the skill than what you have in capacity for the skill in the period filtered for in the Global Funnel Filter.

 Dark blue indicates under-utilized. Said differently: There is less demand for the skill than what you have in capacity for the skill in the period filtered for in the Global Funnel Filter.

 No color for an interval indicates utilization is within adequate threshold.

&   A white ampersand Indicates no demand nor capacity for that skill in the period filtered for in the Global Funnel Filter.

A gold number sign (#) indicates demand is greater than zero but capacity is zero. Said differently: There is demand for the skill however no one has that skill (capacity) in the period filtered for in the Global Funnel Filter.