Attribute-Based Planning
Greetings community members!
Today I will deep dive into the attribute-based planning.
In the next experience of SPM, attribute-based planning is the base for three functionalities -
- Capacity planning,
- Resource management and
- Financial planning
That’s why it becomes important to have a clear understanding of attribute-based planning before you start using any of the above three functionalities.
This article covers following points:
- What is attribute-based planning
- Need of attribute-based planning
- Different areas using attribute-based planning
- Steps:
- Configure the planning attributes
- Populate the planning attributes
What is Attribute-based planning?
To understand this concept, let's first understand the meaning of this term.
Attribute: is a property or a characteristic defined as a resource type or a task type.
Planning: based on the selected attributes, one can make informed decisions about how to plan the capacity, allocate resources, and\or forecast cost.
In simple terms - Attribute based planning facilitates the planning, based on specific attributes or characteristics of resources and \ or tasks.
In ServiceNow SPM, the concept of attribute-based planning was first introduced with Aug 2023 store release supporting Utah patch 5 and above.
OOTB, 5 planning attributes are available and these attributes can be accessed from left navigation panel
- All -> Strategic Planning -> Planning Attributes & also from
- All -> Project Administration -> Planning Attributes
You can also add a new planning attributes from Planning Attributes UI.
Depending upon whether this attribute is enabled for capacity planning, financial planning, resource management, the planning attribute column configuration tables will be populated.
It is mandatory to map the newly added attribute with the corresponding attribute of every planning attribute column configuration table shown in the lower section of the UI.
Need of Attribute Based Planning:
Attribute based planning
- provides a structured approach at the organization level by focusing on the right set of tasks, or resource attributes required in the planning process.
- enables the organization to perform the capacity planning, resource planning & financial planning on the criteria of their choice. As mentioned earlier, these planning attributes can either be resource or task type.
For example: ACME enterprise is doing the next year planning. Leadership would like to know the available capacity by resource groups and the resource roles.
In this case, they would enable the planning attributes – Group and Role – for capacity planning.
GLOBEX enterprise is also doing future planning and they would like to know the capacity of each group by resource type (internal vs external) . In this case, they can do the capacity planning by Group & Employee Type.
Note: These planning attributes are configured at the global level. This means that once you set the planning attributes for resource management, capacity planning and / or financial planning, it will be applicable across the enterprise.
Important: Employee profile is must for attribute-planning.
Different areas using planning attributes
As mentioned earlier, there are three areas which are dependent on the planning attributes. They are -
- Capacity planning
- Resource management
- Financial planning
Steps:
Configure the planning attributes:
This is the first step. In this step -
- Identify the attributes for financial planning, resource management & capacity planning.
- Out of the box, five attributes are available to plan financial management, resource management, & capacity planning (refer below screenshot)
- If an attribute is enabled for capacity planning, it is enabled for resource management by default.
- To enable an attribute for financials, it should be enabled for resource management.
All -> Strategic Planning -> Planning Attributes
Populate the planning attributes:
After identifying the planning attributes, we need to create the employee definition. Using this employee definition, we would generate the employee profile.
For example: To populate the planning attributes, for all the active resources with resource role as pps_resource, create the employee definition, with these two conditions.
Then click on ‘Generate Employee Profiles’
To check the populated values:
All -> Employee Profile -> Employee Profiles
What if planning attribute value need to be updated in future?
Certainly, planning attribute value for a user can be updated. However, updating the value will update the generated capacity as well according to the updated value.
To change the user’s planning attribute values, manually – you can select the related link – “View Employee Profile” which will open up the employee profile as shown in below screenshot… from here you can update the values.
You can also utilize the related link – ‘ Populate primary resource attributes ’ (As shown in above screenshot) to auto-populate the Primary resource group, primary resource role, and primary resource skill as mentioned in the employee profile.
NOTE: This option only works when user has only one resource group, one resource role and one resource skill associated with the user. In case of multiple values, system couldn’t decide which one to select as primary value hence this link won’t populate the values.
Scheduled Job: Populate primary attributes for all resources
Can be used to populate the primary attributes for all the resources.
Frequently asked questions (FAQs)
1) Can I enable\disable the financial planning attributes after projects financials have started using these planning attributes?
NOT Recommended.
Even if you try to enable\disable system will update the user by showing following message:
Modifications to financial attributes may cause issues in labor cost plans related to on-going projects. Please make sure to delete any existing labor cost plans in on-going projects before regenerating labor cost plans on projects after the updates to financial attributes.
This means
To disable an attribute for financial planning for an ongoing project, you need to -
- Delete all the existing labor cost plans
- Disable the attribute for financials and
- Regenerate labor cost plans
To enable an attribute for financial planning requires that attribute should be enabled for resource management as well.
2) Can I add other planning attributes of resource type or task type?
For example: Requirement is to perform capacity planning & resource management using location. In this case, can I add location as one of the planning attributes?
YES, if you have admin role.
3) Even after using the related link - 'Populate primary resource attributes' and \ or the job -Populate primary attributes for all resources, for some of the resources, their primary attributes such as primary resource group, and primary resource role is not populated. What am I missing?
Probably these users are associated with more than one resource groups and resource roles.
In case of multiple values, system couldn’t decide which one to select as primary value hence this link won’t populate the values.
NEXT STEPS: Once the planning attributes are configured and populated, now is the time to start using the Next experience capacity planning, resource management and financial management.
Capacity Planning Article: Link
