Can I use Resource Management with SAFe?

[Karol6]

Hi All, I'm wondering whether it's possible to use the resource mgmnt module with SAFe. We work as an Agile Release Train and would like to utilize Resource Management to plan work and capacity but SN docs seem to be primarily listing Projects and Demands. Has anyone managed to successfully utilize it with SAFe?

[Patrick Laroch1]

Hi,

Resource Management can definitely be used with SAFe. Resource plans can be created on any TASK type including ARTs. When implementing it will be very important to understand how the organization is managing capacity because Servicenow manages capacity at the group level and many Agile organizations will have members as part of multiple Agile Teams. The secret will be in finding the correct correlation between Resource Groups for Capacity Management and Agile Teams for backlog/sprint management.

[erikbartholdy]

You could also argue, that using resource management for Agile is kind of contradictive, since one of the fundamental ideas of agile teams, is that the team plans their time by themselves, and the team has a capacity controlling how much work can be done in a given sprint. 

As Patrick writes, this would require a lot of analyzing and process discussion, so you do not end up using Resource Management for something it is not designed to do. (I have been there, you don't want to go there 😀  ) 

[Nick Z1]

Without getting into the purist discussion of Agile and the frameworks principle I would like to address the ask from a more practical perspective presented by our clients, especially the ones who use contractors along with employees. They are on the hook to report resource cost that was incurred during the planning, development and testing cycles.

Simply put assume every resource works for 40 hours a week. That's their available capacity.

Each resource can be part of more than one group as long as you allocate a set number of their weekly hours to each group.

A bunch of resources in a group that works on agile stories will dictate the group capacity.

Again without getting into a debate about methodology I would simplify by calculating a point = 1 hour and use that conversion to calculate the hours required for each story

Resources can then either quote story task or story number when reporting time on a weekly basis.

Resource plans can be created for resources as way of forecast in pretty much the same way irrespective if its a  Project, Agile or SAFe.

Reconciliation of forecasted resource plans comes through time sheet.

In your case you will can adopt a naming convention for SAFe Groups to call them out vs other resource groups.