Functional Roles vs. Resource Pools

Main Difference Between Roles and Pools

The most significant difference between the Functional Roles vs. Resource Pool is assignment of staff to each.  Employees are assigned to a single Resource Pool, whereas, they may be assigned to multiple functional Roles.

Functional Roles

Functional Roles define the primary and secondary job duties that a user performs. After defining a set of Functional Roles, users will need to be assigned these values as this will help project managers assign users to projects based on his or her capabilities.

It is understood that employees "wear multiple hats"; therefore a user can have multiple Functional Roles. It is best to define which of the Functional Roles is the user's Primary Role. A Primary Functional Role is what is used when calculating the users availability when sorting by Functional Role in Resource Management.  By default each user has the Functional Role of Participant, when other Functional Roles are added this can be modified.

When evaluating project requests (potential work that organization or institution is going to undertake), Functional Roles will be added to the request so that work effort can be estimated and capacity planning reviewed. During project request evaluation, the actual resource that will be assigned to a potential project is often unknown. However, after evaluating the scope of the project, project request evaluators can typically identify the roles needed to complete the project. Once a project request is approved, a staffing exercise will be performed and the Functional Roles that were previously added to the project request will be replaced by users having that specific primary or secondary functional role.

Although TeamDynamix offers features to track Project costs by assigning cost rates and standard rates to each Functional Role, ITS has not opted to use these features. 

Below are the functional roles established during ITS' implementation of PPM:

• Database Administrator
• Enterprise Application Analyst
• Enterprise System Administrator
• Health IT
• Identity Management
• IT Service Desk Call Center
• IT Service Desk Desktop Support
• ITS Service Desk Walk-In Support
• ITS Labs Support
• Linux Support
• Networking
• Physical Infrastructure
• Project Manager
• Storage
• System Security
• Telephony
• Training and Facilitation
• VMWare Support
• Windows Support

Resource Pools

Resource Pools are typically classified by the Resource Management area responsible for assigning resources to projects. A Resource Pool is assigned a manager as this is the person that typically has control over the resources/users belonging the pool and to approve any staffing requests made for his or her users.

In addition to making staffing decisions by Resource Pool, the Resource Pool value is available as a filter on many reports within TeamDynamix. This will enable reporting by the Resource Pool so that, for example, leadership can see where specific pools are currently deployed.

Users can belong to only one Resource Pool.  Below are the resource pools established during ITS' implementation of PPM:

• Customer Service / Support / Labs & Operations
• Enterprise Applications
• Information Security
• ISOS
• Networking and Communications

Creating/Modifying Resource Pools  (Admin Function Only)

To create a Resource Pool:

1. Login to TeamDynamix and go to the Admin application
2. Expand the Resource Pools section
3. Hit the green New + button and populate fields and select the appropriate Options to create the Resource Pool

To modify a Resource Pool:

1. Login to TeamDynamix and go to the Admin application
2. Expand the Resource Pools section
3. A List of all Resource Pools will show, click the Edit button in the Actions column to modify the Resource Pool

To add change a Users' Resource Pool:

1. Login to TeamDynamix and go to the Admin application
2. Expand the Users & Roles section 
3. Select User to edit
4. Scroll down to 'Resource Management' section to locate Resource Pool