RESOURCE PLANNING with PROJECT COMMANDER

Overview

Resource planning in the 21st century
In a modern planning environment, for project orientated organisations, the management and control of a portfolio of multiple projects/jobs is becoming more and more important.

Information at project and executive levels need to be available quickly and flexibly.

For many public and private sector organisations, limited resources – especially labour – are at the core of successful planning. It is vital to understand the profile of resources needed and used, so that timescales and costs can be forecasted with greater accuracy.

More and more organisations are finding good computerised project management to be essential.

Resource planning in many medium to small sized companies falls to managers rather than experienced planners. They, just as much as full-time planners, need software that is straightforward, intuitive, strongly graphical and capable of highly professional output.

Choosing a software tool for resource planning
Planning products from the large household names (for example Microsoft Project ) have proved to be inadequate, difficult to use without training, expensive to purchase in multiple units and inflexible in terms of reporting.

Many organisations have resorted to using Excel as a planning tool, but though it can create simple plans, it is not suited to integrated management or to the generation of plans that need regular updating.

Project Commander is a modern resource/project management package (with none of the above disadvantages) which is excellent for:

• Tendering/Proposals
  It allows you to create high quality project plans that reflect a corporate image to customers. Combination reports allow cost and resource graphs to be incorporated in concise presentations
  
  
• Planning
  Plans can include potential risk time allowances to reflect uncertainty
  
  
• Resources
  Resources can be analysed by skills, location or team and these can be used to filter reports across resources rather than projects.
  
  
• Consolidation
  For centralised planning all projects can be saved on one file and each job is referenced uniquely, so individual projects can be filtered separately. Where planning is diversified throughout the organisation, projects can be consolidated upon demand in order to report on summary timescales, total cost and labour requirements.
  
  
• Resourcing new jobs and what-ifs
  As new projects are agreed, consolidation reports will show where resources are currently allocated and assist in helping managers assign relevant resources. In many cases, where there are conflicts in target dates and resources available, multiple levels of undo allow managers to evaluate different scenarios with or without changing the original plans.
  
  
• Timesheets
  PMSC’s Timesheet package (or any other third party software) can be interfaced to transfer time bookings directly into Project Commander. Alternatively time spent on projects can be input manually .
  
  
• Progress reporting to clients
  Progress to date reports, using actual resource time spent or task % complete and baselines, show clients how the actuals compare with the target in terms of the timeline, costs and resources.
  
  
• Rescheduling
  For projects that are behind target, tasks can be automatically rescheduled by Project Commander with a single click; alternatively outstanding tasks can be replanned from the current date. Multiple levels of undo allow plans to be easily reworked.
  
  
• Progress reporting internally
  Project Commander has a number of reports that analyse the project for use in progress meetings and in forecasting timescale, costs and resources against targets.
  
  
• Communication
  Project Commander includes a toolkit of useful features:
  1. Plans can be saved in PDF format or as Word documents for easy distribution.
  2. Any report/graph can be saved as an image which can be included in Word or PowerPoint as part of a report or presentation.
  3. The free Project Viewer, which allows Project Commander files to be viewed but not changed, can be distributed internally or to clients (without the need to worry about licensing or cost).



• Executive reporting
  For management, there is a range of reports and graphics that can be applied to a single project or a group of projects.

Want to know more?
See our illustrated online guide, or download it in pdf format.

Online Guide to Resource Planning with Project Commander
Pdf Guide to Resource Planning with Project Commander

Note: To download the pdf file you may need to right-click on the link and choose "Save Target As". Downloading can take several minutes on a normal 56k dial up line.

For summary details of Project Commander, including prices and comparisons with other products, see the Project Commander overview