ResourceFirst Introduction
Introduction to the ResourceFirst product and PDWare’s resource-centric philosophy.
Introduction
ResourceFirst is a cloud-based management tool for project and portfolio planning and execution. It features unique resource planning capabilities for aligning resource capacity with demand to ensure that your project portfolio is achievable.
The product includes dynamic portfolio and project planning and execution oversight in support of company objectives. It provides the ability to optimize results in the face of fluctuating work priorities, schedules, demand, and staff capacity.
ResourceFirst engages all stakeholders: resource/functional managers, project managers, portfolio teams, executives, and PMO / EPMO functions
PDWare Approach
The PDWare philosophy is to enable effective project planning and oversight that has optimum positive impact on portfolio and strategy execution. Since resource/skill capacity and demand management is key to portfolio success, we called our flagship solution ResourceFirstTM.
Traditionally, organizations have viewed resource planning as an afterthought, focusing primarily on project schedule planning and management. It’s no wonder “inadequate resources” is consistently at or near the top of the list of reasons why projects and portfolios fail to deliver expected results.
About ResourceFirst
ResourceFirstTM was designed with several different types of users and stakeholders in mind:
- Team-Members
- Resource/Functional Managers
- Project Managers
- PMO/Portfolio Managers
- Product Portfolio Teams
- Financial Managers
- Mid-level to Senior Executives
- Administrators
Foundational Data in ResourceFirst
Our approach is that the software product should be simple, practical, and not get in the way. While ResourceFirst is a powerful, dynamic software product, its key functions rely on a simple set of foundational data:
- Project data – including charter information, key attributes, budget, major schedule dates, & more
- Resource data – including skills, rate, cost centers, total availability for project work (i.e., capacity) and other attributes
- Assignments (Labor and Financial Forecasts) – Time-phased labor FTEs or hours, by project and resource or skill required, and time-phased financials by project and financial item.
To learn more about each of the main areas in ResourceFirst, visit the respective sections in this site, where you’ll find a wealth of how-to content, best practices, and more.
About “Organization Breakdown Structures” (OBS)
A typical corporate org chart is an example of an Organization Breakdown Structure (OBS). The org chart is a “tree” structure – each block on the chart is a node which has a parent node (except the top node) and which may have child nodes. A node that has no child nodes is usually called a leaf node.
ResourceFirst provides two primary Organization Breakdown Structures; the resource OBS (ROBS) and the project OBS (POBS). Every resource is a member of a single ROBS node; every project is a member of a single POBS node.
A resource OBS typically represents how resources are organized in the company (usually by a hierarchy of divisions and departments). A project OBS node can be similar or can be arranged by some other characteristic such as product line.
An example of node hierarchy might be:
ABC Enterprises
—— Division 1
———–Department A
—————-Team 123
—— Division 2
———–Department B
When projects or resources are created, they are created in the node at the appropriate level in the structure.
OBS’s play a role in system configuration (defining what system features users see), access permissions (defining the projects and resources users are able to see or modify), and user specification of what data to load.
