4PM: Resource Utilization

One of biggest challenge being delivery manager at onsite will be tracking resource utilization for both  offshore & onsite resources and update client accordingly to get new projects. Monitoring resource utilization has lot process and dependencies to get accurate utilization, my purpose is to update my 4PM portal with simple screens to capture the resource planning once the project has been approved.

The dynamic portlets in my dashboard will convert them into nice charts/grids for my tracking and make my job easy.

Utilization Capture Screen

In this screen resource utilization will be captured based on the projects and its account, year and type. Once the utilization are recorded in the database and it can be converted into the dashboard view.

Dynamic Portlet

Dynamic portlet is based on database ORM and condition processing logic which will help to render the chart in the portlet. In the dynamic portlet configuration we can do following,

-          Select the fields required for the rendering

-          Apply the condition for the rendering

-          Get the view

Portlet Configuration – Field Selection

For this portlet juneMonth, julyMonth, augustMonth, sepMonth & type fields has been selected from the “Utilization” table and abbreviation field has been select from “Account” table. These tables are not directly related, but their indirectly related like,

Utilization –[has foreign key relationship]-Project-[has foreign key relationship]-Account

Dynamic portlet module in the 4PM project understands this relationship and prepares the dynamic query to construct the required view.

Portlet Configuration – Field Conditions

For this portlet following conditions to be applied on the selected fields,

-          Sum all juneMonth column values in the table – which means summing up the utilization for all projects.

-          Sum all JulyMonth column values in the table – which means summing up the utilization for all projects.

-          << And same for all selected months >>

-          4PM maintain separate utilization sheet for Onsite and Offshore, pick the rows where the “type” has been marked as "offshore"

-          4PM maintains utilization sheet for many accounts, we need to pick the rows which applies to “test” account.

Lot of left/inner joins queries required to meet this combination. Dynamic portlet module in the 4PM prepares all the combinations and generates database query. In the configuration option, we can simply select the condition type for field like “Chart : Sum”, “Chart : Aggregate”, “Exact : Offshore", etc (custom commands). On successful configuration we get following wonderful portlet view.