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 plans without affecting the current plan and forecast. [The scenario feature does not support alternate resource pools; it supports collections of projects and their assignments.]
Scenarios contain projects. Assignments are included in scenarios by virtue of being on scenario projects.
A scenario can contain one or more projects.
Terminology Note:
“Current plan” and “current forecast” both refer to normal project and assignment records (rows) that are not part of a scenario.
“Source project” and “source assignment” refer to normal project and assignment records (rows) from which linked scenario projects and assignments have been created.
Example Use Cases
A Single Project
A new project has been added to the portfolio and you don’t want assignment 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 assignment forecasts occurs in the scenario.
This scenario is posted if it is approved.
[Note: An alternative is to use the project initiation feature. Labor, financial, and asset plans can be created for projects in initiation without affecting the in-flight portfolio.]
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.
You share access to the scenario with all users who need to participate in the planning OR you make the scenario public.
This scenario is posted if it is approved.
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 increase output by 10%.
You select all projects your are or could be working on, and create a private scenario including child projects and assignments.
On assignment pages you plan the staffing for an additional 10% of your committed projects; in the scenario dialog you turn off your current plan projects. The financial and staff shortfall by skill between your current plan and the scenario plan shows what is required to increase project throughput by 10%. [Note: The resource Pool is NOT captured in a scenario.]
This scenario may not be posted in its entirety. Individual projects may be posted if approved.
Entire Organization
As a business unit or profit center you are to prepare the annual Operating Plan.
You load data for an appropriate date range
You select all current projects and create a public scenario including children and assignments.
You create all projects or placeholders expected to start over the two year plan and add them to the scenario.
In the scenario, you plan the execution of all new projects.
This scenario may not be posted in its entirety. Individual projects may be posted if approved.
Characteristics and features of Scenarios
Note: The term “assignment” in this article refers to all types of assignments – Asset, Financial, Labor, Team, and (Open) Request.
A scenario contains a copy of one or more existing projects with or without source project assignments. If you choose not to include assignments when adding a project to a scenario, you can add assignments to the scenario project later.
All project fields and all assignment forecasting features of ResourceFirst are available for planning within the scenario. This planning has no effect on the source projects and their assignments until the scenario owner “posts” the scenario to its source projects.
When planning in the scenario is complete, the scenario can be posted back to the current plan. When a scenario is posted, the source project is affected in the following ways:
Scenario Project Data fields overwrite source project values
Scenario assignment values overwrite source assignment values
New assignments in the scenario are added to the source project
New assignments added after scenario creation on source projects remain untouched after Post
Scenarios contain projects; assignments are included in scenarios by virtue of being on scenario projects.
Other source project objects such as documents, comments, distribution, events, Gantt (WBS task plan), etc. are NOT copied to the scenario.
Note: If include assignments or include children are selected when a scenario is created, ALL included records in the database are part of the scenario regardless of the current data load project and resource OBS selections.
During the current login session you will see only the data load records. In a subsequent session with broader data load OBS selections you may see more, or all, scenario projects and assignments.
Public vs. Private Scenarios
Scenarios can be made public or private by an owner at any time.
Private: Can be seen only by the owner and any users with whom the owner has shared the scenario.
Public: Can be seen by all users
Users who have access to the scenario can see only the projects and assignments in project and resource nodes to which they have read rights or above.
This means there may be users who can see or modify part, but not all, of a scenario.
Data Entry/Edit Operations in Scenarios
See Creating a Simple Scenario for how to create a scenario.
Users can modify or add to scenarios in the following ways:
Add Projects
[New projects cannot be created in scenarios.]
Scenario projects can only be created (added) 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.
Project attributes (field values) can be modified.
Asset, Labor and Financial Assignments can be created in, or added to, scenario projects.
Forecast Demand on scenario assignments can be moved or modified.
Delete Assignments
New assignments created in the scenario can be deleted.
To remove original demand when a scenario is posted, set all non-zero demand values to zero (not empty values) on the scenario assignments. An alternative is to delete the assignment(s) in both the original AND in the scenario.
If an assignment is deleted in only one place, the post scenario result will include the assignment.
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, including read-only ones, in the scenario.
Post scenario ignores modified read-only assignments.
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.
Note: Deleting all the projects in a scenario (on the Project Data page) does NOT delete the scenario. You can add projects to a scenario that has no projects. The scenario is an object with a name and other attributes separate from the projects it contains.
