Tracking FTE Changes as a core part of a Project's progress and lifecycle

[phil_bool_unifi]

Hi all.  I'd love your thoughts on a solution I'm investigating, to see if I've missed something in SPM that might help.

I've got a customer who wants to formalise the fact that a Project is intended to increase/decrease company headcount.  Typically, a project could be planned to reduce headcount (FTE) by x over its lifespan.

My first approach was that this was a 'Benefit', which enabled me to create a Monetary Benefit Plan, saying the financial value of the headcount reduction would materialise over the benefit period.  This didn't hit the mark with the customer, as they wanted displayed values and actuals for both the count in FTE and the financial return delivered by each breakdown period.  They liked the idea of having a benefit type for planned FTE, but really needed extra data points on the record to be able to achieve what they wanted.  

I'm very wary of customising the benefit plan or cost plan records, so didn't go down the path of adding these.  

Instead, I've proposed a separate set of records called 'FTE Plan' and 'FTE Breakdown' records that are structured the same way as benefit / cost plan records, but creation of an FTE Plan creates an associated Benefit Plan (or Cost Plan if the FTE Plan represents an Increase in FTE).  This FTE Plan is associated to the parent and its month-by-month breakdowns are associated to the matching Benefit Plan Breakdowns, making reporting pretty straightforward.

It still feels like a somewhat complex solution, although an effective one, so I was wondering if anyone has experience of delivering something like this by another means.  If so, I'd love to hear your thoughts!

If there's no OOB approach I'm missing, I'll plan to extend this so it covers Demands, and capture migrating them to the Project Record when it gets created.  If anyone can spot any issues I'm likely to see, please shout!

[Namita Mishra]

Hi @phil_bool_unifi ,

Very valid ask.......

Did you try non-monetary benefit plan associated with monetary benefit plan?

Pros and Cons:

1) You can get the financial savings by each breakdown period. No customization required.

2) There is no OOTB sync between the associated non-monetary and monetary benefit plans. You can configure a rule to make this in sync - just a thought.

This is not a solution but my suggestion for you to consider this....this may help your customer.

Thank You!

Namita Mishra

[phil_bool_unifi]

Thanks @Namita Mishra this is something I considered.  My thinking was that I could make the FTE Plan into a third 'type' of benefit plan by extending the benefit_plan table.  That way I'd have the fiscal period logic available immediately, along with the OOB roll up of totals.  The reason I rejected this initially is that the customer wants to be able to track increases as well as decreases in value, and the increase in FTE would still appear as a 'benefit' in the OOB calculations - albeit a non-monetary one.  Can you think of a way that I could mitigate that risk without having to customise the benefit plan rollup calculations?

[phil_bool_unifi · Accepted solution]

It's occured to me since that I could add guidance on the form to advise the users to enter negative values when raising an FTE increase.  It may seem counterintuitive to the user, but it's definitely a possibility.

I'll run through both possibilities with the customer.  Thanks again @Namita Mishra