This chapter discusses the functionality behind project team definition, including the definition of scheduled and nonscheduled team members and the definition of organization roles, and the definition and management of scheduled team roles.
This chapter covers the following topics:
A team is a collection of roles on a project. You can divide the people on a team into two categories: scheduled members and nonscheduled members.
Scheduled team members are those people for whom you want to track the hours, utilization, and financial impact (costs, revenue, and margin). Your scheduled team members for a project can also be referred to as the delivery team. For more information about scheduled team members, see Defining Scheduled Team Members.
Nonscheduled team members of a project comprise the extended team and include project team members whose time is not specifically tracked. For more information about nonscheduled team members, see Defining Nonscheduled Team Members.
Subteams enable you to classify your people on your project into logical groups. For example, you may have resources on a project that you can group into consultants, administrative staff, and engineers, or, you may have people grouped into subteams for different phases of a project.
For a project, you can enter general staffing information such as the default calendar, role list, initial team template, and advertisement rules.
The role list controls access for the roles that you can add to your project. The initial team template indicates the name of the team template that was used to create requirements on the project upon initial project creation.
The advertisement rule controls the visibility of requirements both inside and outside of the organization. For more information, see Advertisement Rule for a Requirement, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
Oracle Projects comes seeded with a project manager role, and requires that you designate one project team member as a project manager. While you can have only one project manager at any point in time, you can change the project manager role assignment as necessary.
Note: Approved contract projects must have a project manager for the duration of the project. A project manager is not required for indirect projects or capital projects.
You can also define people as team members in order to facilitate distribution of Projects reports to responsible parties.
A team role represents either a requirement or an assignment on a project or task. You use the project role as a template for your team roles. When you create a team role, you specify the project role from which to obtain all the default information. The default information is copied from the project role to the team role. Thereafter, you can modify the information on the team role as appropriate for that role on that particular project. Any changes you make to the team role are exclusive and do not affect the definition of the project role.
For example, you have a project role called DBA. You create a team role on a project called Lead DBA based on the DBA project role. All the defined competencies, job information, and security information is copied from the DBA project role to this new Lead DBA team role. You decide to add more competencies to the Lead DBA team role and to change the job level. These changes are only reflected on this particular team role. For more information, see Competencies, Oracle Projects Resource Management User Guide.
Each project role has a security structure determining the features users can access and the functions they can perform. This security structure is referred to as role-based security. Though role-based security is optional, it offers you more flexibility than responsibility-based security because the role of a user can change from project to project. Therefore, the function access a user may require can change from project to project. For more information on security, see Security in Oracle Projects.
In the application, the team role is the value displayed on most pages. The project role is only available on the assignment and requirement details pages.
Oracle Projects provides two ways of creating team roles for your project, and they relate to how you staff your project and assign resources to tasks:
Adding a Requirement: When you define a requirement for a scheduled resource, you also create and define a team role based on a project role. You can then create a project assignment for the requirement once you find a person resource that is appropriate for it. For more information about adding a requirement, see Project Requirements.
Adding a requirement is also the first step in the "top-down" staffing method, which you can use in conjunction with Oracle Project Management. With top-down staffing, you can create a set of project roles, and then have the system generate a planning resource. For more information about top-down staffing, see Integrating Work Planning with the Project Team, Oracle Project Management User Guide.
Creating a Team Role from a Planning Resource List: You can generate team roles based on resource assignments that utilize a planning resource list. This is part of the "bottom-up" staffing method, which you can use in conjunction with Oracle Project Management. With bottom-up staffing, you assign planning resources to tasks in your project and then generate project team roles for those resource assignments. For more information about bottom-down staffing, see Integrating Work Planning with the Project Team, Oracle Project Management User Guide.
Nonscheduled team members are people who have a role on a project team but whose time is not specifically tracked. For example, you may have extended team members that support the administrative aspects of the project and who perform tasks such as reviewing candidates and providing backup support. You can also have client contacts as nonscheduled members.
Note: Team members are also referred to as key members.
You can use nonscheduled team members and their associated roles when you set up project-based security in Oracle Projects. For more information on project-based security, see Security in Oracle Projects.
You can designate nonscheduled team members at the project level only. Subject to the functions that are associated with their login responsibility, a nonscheduled team member can view and update all project information except labor cost details. To permit viewing of labor cost details, team members must have function security that expressly allows query of labor cost details.
Note: A user with cross-project update access does not need to be defined as a nonscheduled team member in order to view or update project information, or to view labor cost details. A user with cross-project view access does not need to be defined as a nonscheduled team member in order to view project-level information.
Oracle Projects uses effective dates to control nonscheduled team member and nonscheduled team member role assignments. You can inactivate a nonscheduled team member's role at any time by specifying an ending effective date. You can reactivate the nonscheduled team member or redefine the nonscheduled team member with a new role by reentering the nonscheduled team member with a beginning effective date that is after the previous ending effective date. You can also associate a nonscheduled team member with more than one role on a project. You do not need to define each person who is doing work on the project as a nonscheduled team member--only those who need to maintain project data and/or view project expenditures.
When you enter a nonscheduled team member, the system provides a default start date based on the following precedence order. At each precedence level, if there is no value for the date, the date at the next level is the default date:
Project Actual Start Date
Project Scheduled Start Date
Project Target Start Date
System date
You can enter a future-dated employee as a nonscheduled team member. A future-dated employee is an employee who is starting employment on a future date. For more information, see Defining People, Oracle Projects Implementation Guide.
Related Topics
A staffing plan consists of the resource requirements and assignments defined for a project. You can use staffing plans to generate organization forecasts, and project budgets and forecasts.
For more information, see Understanding Organization Forecasting, and Overview of Project Budgeting and Forecasting, Oracle Project Management User Guide.
Related Topics
Using Organization Forecasting
Generating Budgets, Oracle Project Management User Guide
Generating Forecasts, Oracle Project Management User Guide
You can create team roles for scheduled team members by adding project requirements to your project. You can then create project assignments for specific people resources by filling the project requirements. You can also create scheduled team roles by adding team members on a project directly, selecting a schedulable role For more information about project requirements, see Project Requirements. For more information about project assignments, see Project Assignments.
If you find that many of your projects have common requirements, you can create a team template to handle them. A team template is a predefined and reusable set of project requirements. For more information, see Team Templates.
You can also create administrative assignments, which represent non-work activities and are tracked against administrative projects. You can only create administrative assignments for administrative projects. For more information, see Creating Administrative Assignments.
The purpose of requirements is to provide a representation of the people class resources that are needed to complete the project.
For example, you have a project to install a product at a customer site. This project may require two DBAs and two Implementation Consultants skilled in the product to be installed. Without knowing the specific individuals that will fill these required roles, you can identify information such as what level of experience is necessary, where the work will be carried out, and approximately how long each position is required. You define this information for each requirement which simplifies the process of identifying potential resources to fill these roles.
A requirement is an unfilled work position on a project. It is an open team role without an assigned planning resource.
Requirements also differ from assignments in that they have additional attributes such as job levels. These additional attributes provide the detail necessary to identify potential candidates to fill the role during resource searches.
If you use Oracle Project Resource Management, you can also define competencies and advertisement rules for new requirements. For more information, see Staffing Project Requirements, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
The requirement lifecycle begins with the creation of an open requirement on a project. The project requirement has three system schedule statuses, it can be filled, canceled, or open. A project requirement status begins as open and can either be filled through a resource search or directly assigning a resource to fill the requirement.
Adding requirements requires the input of basic information such as the role, time period, location, staffing priority, and job level range. Most of this information is defaulted from the selected project. The team role, job level range, and competencies are defaulted from the selected role.
You can change any of these defaults when adding the requirement, except for the competencies, candidate score information, and financial rate overrides. You can modify these fields through the Requirement Details page after you have added the requirement. The competencies of a requirement are used to search for potential resources to fill the requirement based on matching skills.
Note: You must use Oracle Project Resource Management to be able to enter and track competencies and candidate score information. For more information, see Staffing Project Requirements, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide and Candidate Management, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
If you need multiple requirements with the same description and criteria, you can enter the number of requirements in the Number of Copies field. For example, if you need 3 DBAs, enter the basic information for the requirement, and then, enter 3 in the Number of Copies field. When you save the requirement, 3 entries for DBA appear under Added Requirements. In order to avoid later confusion, we advise you to make requirement copies unique by changing their names and other attributes.
Note: If you use Oracle Project Management, the system will try to match an existing planning resource to your project requirement. If your project uses a decentralized planning resource list, the system can also generate a new planning resource to fit the requirement. For more information, see Integrating Work Planning with the Project Team, Oracle Project Management User Guide.
After you save a requirement, you can enter or modify detailed information such as the schedule, competencies and forecast information from the Requirement Details page.
If you use Oracle Project Resource Management, you can also use the Requirement Details page to define staffing owners, staffing priorities, competencies, candidates, and advertisements for requirements. For more information, see Staffing Project Requirements, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
Basic requirement information includes the team role, dates, and staffing priority as well as other general data. You can also enter the Resource Loan Agreement detail, such as if an extension of the team role is possible, who owns the expenses of the resource, and the expense limit. This information is primarily used in cases where a resource is borrowed from a different organization than the project organization.
Note: If you use Oracle Project Management and you change the team role for a project requirement, the system propagates the change to all related task assignments. You cannot change the team role if it is associated with any task assignments that have had actual cost or quantity actuals entered against them. For more information about task assignments, see Integrating Work Planning with the Project Team, Oracle Project Management User Guide.
Schedule details include the start and end dates, the schedule status, planning resource, and work pattern. Click the Update Scheduled People button to update the following details of one or more requirements simultaneously:
Team Role
Start Date
End Date
Calendar
Staffing Owner
Work Type
Additional Staffing Information
Description
% of Calendar
City
Country
State/Region
If the Calendar or the % of Calendar or both are changed, then the start and end dates must be the same or within the originally specified team role assignment dates, but these dates are not stored in the database. A new work pattern may be used for the changed duration while the work pattern (for the original team role assignment) will be retained for the remaining period.
When a project requirement or an assignment is created, the calendar specified is saved as the base calendar, which cannot be changed. However, you can select a calendar that is different from the base calendar to derive the work pattern, and optionally the effort for the given date range. The work pattern and / or the effort are updated based on changes in the calendar, date range, or % usage of the calendar. If you enter only a value for the Calendar, then 100% of the calendar is considered for deriving the new work pattern, and if a value for the % Calendar is specified. If the Calendar is not specified, then the base calendar is considered to derive the new work pattern.
The start and end dates of the team role assignment can be modified to advance the start date or defer the end date. However, the user should not enter any value in the % of Calendar or Calendar fields. The modified dates will be stored in the database and used to generate a new work pattern for the new start and end dates. The team role assignment status will be updated automatically to reflect the assignment has been changed.
When you create a project requirement or a project assignment, the start and end dates of the requirement or assignment will be validated against the project transaction start and end dates. This is determined by the profile option, PA: Require Assignment and Project Date Validation. If this profile option is set to Yes, then the project requirement or assignment start and end dates must be within the project transaction date range. If the profile option is set to Warning, then you will be allowed to specify the dates outside the project transaction date range, with a warning. For more information, see PA: Require Assignment and Project Date Validation, Oracle Projects Implementation Guide.
The hours information is used to generate forecast totals for cost, revenue, and margin for this team role. This information is also used for calculating resource utilization. For details on the forecast calculations, see Generating Forecasts, Oracle Project Mangement User Guide.
You can enter competency attributes for a project requirement if you use Oracle Project Resource Management. Competencies make it easier to identify potential candidates to fill the requirement during resource searches. For more information, see Staffing Project Requirements, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
You can define advertisement rules to determine how a project requirement is advertised throughout your organization if you use Oracle Project Resource Management. For more information, see Staffing Project Requirements, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
If you use Oracle Project Resource Management, you can enter, rank, and track the status of potential candidates for project requirements. For more information, see Staffing Project Requirements, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
To fill a requirement, you can:
Directly identify a known resource.
Search the resource repository to find a suitable resource, if you use Oracle Project Resource Management. See Resource Search, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide for more information.
When you fill a project requirement, the system creates a project assignment based on that requirement. The assignment identifies the period of time a specific resource will fill a specific role. If the person assigning the resource to the requirement has authority over the resource, the assignment is considered a confirmed assignment. Otherwise, the assignment must go through an approval process, either manual or workflow-enabled depending upon your implementation. These assignments are provisional until confirmed.
In addition, if you use Oracle Project Management and have a generic task-level planning resource assignment that is linked to a project requirement, that generic planning resource is replaced by whichever specific planning resource you use to fill the project requirement. For example, say you have a task with a generic "DBA" planning resource assignment, and that this resource assignment is linked to a specific project requirement. You decide to fill the project requirement with Mary Smith, a specific person. When you do this, the system replaces the generic "DBA" planning resource on the task with Mary Smith. For more information about task assignments and project requirements, see Integrating Work Planning with the Project Team, Oracle Project Management User Guide.
An assignment is a work position on a project that has been associated with a specific person resource for a designated period of time.
Project assignments are typically created when you fill an open project requirement with a person resource. You can also create project assignments directly, by directly identifying both the team role and the person resource who will fill that role.
Note: If you use Oracle Project Management, you can have the system automatically generate assignments by matching planning resources with open requirements or vice-versa. For more information, see Integrating Work Planning with the Project Team, Oracle Project Management User Guide.
The assignment life cycle begins when an assignment is directly created on a project or when a resource is assigned to fill an open requirement. An assignment can have various statuses as required such as provisional, confirmed, and canceled.
Provisional: A resource is identified for an open requirement but not yet confirmed
Confirmed: A resource is confirmed for this assignment
Cancelled: The assignment no longer exists
Each system status can have multiple user statuses such as Open, Under Review, Sent to Vendor.
An assignment starts with a system status of Provisional. When the assignment is approved, the system changes the system status to Confirmed. Confirmed assignments appear on the schedules of the assigned resource and the project. This assignment to the resource reduces the availability of the resource.
Note: If you use Oracle Project Resources Management, you can take advantage of an approval workflow process for assignments. When the assignment is approved, the system can change the system status to Confirmed based on your approval workflow setup. For more information, see Assignment Approval, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
When you select the team role for the assignment, default values are provided for the assignment name and job levels. Values for the assignment location and calendar are retrieved from the associated project. You can change any of these defaults as necessary.
After you have entered all the desired values, the assignment is ready for approval.
The work pattern for the assignment is determined by the calendar type you choose. You can choose one of the following calendar types for the assignment:
Project Calendar: the default calendar associated with the project.
Resource Calendar: the calendar of the assigned resource. The percentage value indicates the percentage of the resource's time allocated for the assignment.
Other Calendar:
After you click Save, the assignments for the selected resources will appear under the Added Assignments section. You can continue to create additional assignments prior to sending them through the approval process.
When you have finished entering assignments, click Continue and Submit to navigate to the Submit for Approval page. For more information on the approval process, refer to Approval Process for Updates to Assignments, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
Related Topics
A team template is a predefined set of requirements that you can apply to your project. A benefit of the team template is that you avoid the repetitive creation of the same requirements on common project teams. With the proper authority, such as Project Super User, you can create team templates for general use on any project.
The effective dates of a team template indicate the period of time during which a template can be applied to projects, regardless of the project actual start date. Values in the Calendar and Work Type fields provide defaults for the requirements on the template. The Role List is the list of roles that you can select for each requirement on the team template. In addition to requirements, you can add subteams to the template that also will be created on a project once the template is applied.
The team template start date and the dates of the template requirements are relative dates used to determine the time periods of the requirements when the team template is applied to an actual project. The template start date is compared with the start date of the project and the dates of the associated requirements shift by a set number of days.
Note: If you use Oracle Project Resource Management, you can define staffing priority, job level, and competency attributes for the requirements you associate with your team templates. For more information about these attributes, see Staffing Project Requirements, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
You have a team template called Fast Forward Team with the effective dates of January 1, 2000 to December 31, 2005 and a start date of March 1, 1990. On this template, you have a requirement called DBA with a start date of April 1, 1990 and an end date of April 30, 1990. If you apply this template prior to December 31, 2005 to a project with a start date of June 1, 2006, the DBA requirement is added to the project with a start date of June 30, 2006 and an end date of July 29, 2006.
The effective dates of the team template are compared with the system date, and as long as the system date falls between the effective dates, you can apply the template to a project. You can apply the team template from the Apply Team Template page accessible through the Schedule Resource page. Or, if your selected project template has an associated team template, then it is applied during the project creation.
Note: If a project has an associated role list, then only those team templates with matching role lists are available to apply to the project. If a project has no associated role list, then all current team templates are available for applying to the project.
Related Topics
Implementing Oracle Project Resource Management, Oracle Projects Implementation Guide
An administrative assignment represents a non-work activity and is tracked against an administrative project (also referred to as an indirect project). You can use administrative assignments to block off time on your resource schedules. The following examples demonstrate the functionality of administrative assignments:
Vacation time
Internal training
Project management duties
Personal holiday
Sick time
Jury duty
Creating administrative assignments is similar to creating regular assignments on a delivery project with one distinction, you use an administrative project. Administrative assignments also require approval.
Administrative assignments are not included in the domain of the delivery team as these assignments are typically tracked on an indirect or administrative project. Administrative projects can have project managers who manage these assignments, but having a project manager is not a requirement.
You may want to track such assignments because they consume the work hours of your resources, and therefore, affect availability, financial forecasting, and resource utilization.
For more information about administrative projects, see the discussion of the indirect project type in Project Type.
Organization roles enable external organizations to participate and collaborate on your projects.
You use the Organizations setup page under the Project tab to add an external organization to a project.
When you add an external organization to a project, you must select a customer or partner project role for the organization.
If the organization has a customer role on the project, you can maintain a list of billing accounts from the organization that belong to the project. If you select customer for a customer organization, you can define billing terms and information for the customer.
You can add both internal and external team members on a project using the Add Team Members page. You can navigate to this page through either the Team Members page or the Organization Details page.
Adding team members from the Add Team Members page enables you to add employees, contingent workers, and external persons from any organization as team members on a project. The Team Members page displays all team members, both internal and external, on your project.
Adding team members from the Organization Details page enables you to choose only people from the organization for which you are viewing the details.
Note: You cannot add external team members to your project as scheduled members. Only internal team members can be scheduled on projects.
You can associate billing accounts from customer organizations with a project. Billing accounts enable you to track billing information related to the participation of customer organizations in projects.
You can add a customer organization billing accounts to your project with the Add Billing Accounts page. You use this page to specify a billing account name and number and enter work and billing site address for the account. You can also define the relationship of the billing account to the project and its percentage of contribution to the project.
You can define and maintain billing account detail information through the Billing Account Details page. Through this page, you can view and update the basic billing account information, define another project to which to bill, and specify the currency (and currency rate type) of the billing invoice. You can also create and maintain a list of billing contacts in the Contacts section.
The Billing Accounts page displays a list of all of the billing accounts available for your projects. With the appropriate edit access, you can also edit or delete the billing accounts on the project as necessary. The user function name for this access is Projects: Options: Customers and Contacts.
Related Topics
Customers, Oracle Projects Implementation Guide
Function Security, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide
Oracle Projects Billing User Guide
Many person resources, requirements, and assignments have schedules. The schedules are comprised of work patterns that include working hours and exceptions, such as vacation days. Each schedule is based on the calendar for the organization or an individually assigned calendar.
Changes to these calendars impact the schedules of the person resources, requirements, and assignments differently. Oracle Project Resource Management provides the following administrative processes to help manage these changes and to maintain consistent schedule information throughout the application:
PRC: Generate Calendar Schedule for a Single Calendar
PRC: Generate Calendar Schedules for a Range of Calendars
PRC: Rebuild Timeline for a Single Resource
PRC: Rebuild Timeline for a Range of Resources
These processes update the schedules and timelines tables with changes to the calendars. For more information on setting up calendars and schedules, see Implementing Oracle Project Foundation Oracle Projects Implementation Guide. For more information on the processes, see Processes in Oracle Projects.
You can view and maintain resource schedules in a list or timeline format and calculate overcommitted and available person resources for a project assignment.
View person resource schedules in a list or timeline format. The list format provides a list of person resources for which you have authority to view. It also shows the duration for which the resources are currently or next available. If a person resource is not available in the requested period, the available dates columns appear with blank values.
The schedule status represents the commitment of the days on the schedule. For example, Provisional means that the days have potential commitment, but are still considered available for other assignments. However, Confirmed means the days are committed to the assignment and are not considered available for other assignments.
From the Resource Schedule page, you can add assignments to one or more resources on the resource list, or drill down into individual resource schedules and related information.
The Schedule page under the Resources tab provides information about the scheduled team roles. You can view this information either as list data or in the form of a timeline graph. The approval status represents the current stage of approval of the entire assignment.
You can also submit one or more assignments for approval. An approval request is sent to the appropriate approver for each resource assignment. If you are submitting a request for multiple roles, a deferred request handles the submission. Therefore, the status of the roles may not change immediately. It will change after the submission has actually been retrieved by a workflow process. For more information, see Approval Process for Updates to Assignments, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide.
Canceling a requirement or assignment will change the status of the item to Canceled, and the item is accessible only for viewing and tracking purposes. If you cancel an assignment, the person resource becomes available only for the time period of the canceled assignment. To delete a canceled team role or assignment, review all canceled team roles under Search from the Scheduled People page. A new requirement copied from the original assignment is created. To assist you with filling the new requirement, the list of candidates for the original assignment is copied to the new requirement. You can reactivate these candidates individually to initiate a new review process.
Note: If the original assignment was not based on a requirement, but rather a direct assignment, no new requirement is created when the assignment is canceled.
You can update the team role schedules of one or more person resources, whether requirements or assignments, using the following options:
If extending a role, you are prompted to specify the status for the extended number of days. As a result, a role can have multiple statuses over its life span. The original duration of the role retains the original status while the extended duration of the role can have a different status.
Update the status of a specified duration of the role, either entire team role or partial duration of the team role.
You can have only one calendar associated with a role for the complete duration. You can change the calendar for the role, but consider the effect, if any, on any duration of the role that has passed.
You can specify the work pattern to take precedence over the calendar associated with the role for any specified duration of the role. For example, if you specify a work pattern for 40 hours (10 hours * 4 days) it will override an already existing work pattern of 40 hours (8 hours * 5 days).
When you update a work pattern for a specific period that results in the work pattern to be the same as a work pattern for a previous or successive period, then they will be combined and displayed as a single work pattern.
You can update the schedule of the role by specifying the number of hours per day in terms of absolute values or as a percentage of the associated calendar. By selecting the Include Non-Work exceptions check box, the specified number of hours overrides any calendar exceptions, such as holidays.
Shift the duration of the role forward or backward by a specified number of days.
The timeline provides a visual interpretation of the list format in either one-month or three-month segments. The bars on the timeline reflect the system statuses for both requirements and assignments. In addition, if you use Oracle Project Resource Management, the resource timelines display the availability and overcommitment of the resource.
The determination of available and overcommitted resources in the timeline is based on the setup defined by your implementation team.
Note: The displayed availability may not be correct if the resource does not have an assigned calendar for the duration of the requirement, or if the calendar schedules have not been generated or updated for the period.
You can view timelines for the following:
Team Schedule
Timeline includes all requirements and assignments on the project display by status. This timeline does not reflect the following:
filled requirements
canceled requirements
canceled assignments
(Single) Resource Schedule
Timeline includes all assignments across projects (including administrative assignments) for the resource by status. It also includes availability and overcommitment time.
(Multiple) Resource Schedule
Timeline includes all assignments of the resources for which you have the authority to view. It also includes the assignment statuses and the availability of the resources.
If a resource has multiple assignments with different statuses for the same time period, then the color of the bar is determined first by the status, and then by the number of hours, if both assignments have the same number of hours. The order or precedence for the statuses in this situation is as follows:
Overcommitted (if two or more confirmed assignments exist for the same time period)
Confirmed Assignment
Confirmed Administrative Assignment
Provisional Assignment
Requirement
Scheduled Role
Timeline includes the schedule and status of a particular project role.
Related Topics
Qualification of Available Resources, Oracle Project Resource Management User Guide
Overcommitments, Oracle Project Rsource Management