Chapter 6: Practice Manager Functions – We Won the Contract! What Now?

In the previous chapter, we learned how to set up the project contracts and pricing. This chapter will take us through the next steps and talk through the work a practice manager will do in Project Operations. As a practice manager, you will undoubtedly have the challenges and pressures of finding people to staff projects directly. Furthermore, you will have to understand the cost and quality implications of your decisions. This chapter is designed to provide you with a level of confidence that enables you to confidently forecast and track utilization across your teams.

Therefore, in this chapter, you will learn about the following concepts:

• Understanding direct staffing models and how they work
• Understanding centralized staffing models and how they generate bookings for team members
• Direct versus centralized staffing models
• Using resource forecasting
• Using revenue forecasting
...

Technical requirements

To perform the tasks in this chapter, you will need the following:

• An Microsoft 365 account and an Azure Active Directory (Azure AD) login
• A Microsoft Dynamics 365 Project Operations Customer Relationship Management (CRM) license
• A Microsoft Project Plan license
• A practice manager security role

Please visit the following link to check the CiA videos:

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Understanding direct staffing models

When handled through a resource management office (RMO) or a resource manager, you typically have a designated person, or people, handling resource requests that come into the system. The handling of these requests is generally very process-driven and is controlled by demand, supply, and data.

However, there are firms that are maybe smaller in size whose practice management is more directly involved in assigning people to projects. If your firm falls into this category, this section is for you and will also include some suggestions that can help you and your resource managers as well.

For this section, a practice manager is responsible for keeping new business coming in, staffing the right team members, forecasting utilization, and tracking billability. They typically perform these functions with disparate systems and a lack of visibility. This is where the functionality of Project Operations can be helpful.

Working with backlog tracking...

Understanding centralized staffing models

A centralized staffing model requires a firm to have a solid identification of their resources, roles, skills, and certifications. Over time, resource managers learn who is skilled where, and there is a considerable amount of internal knowledge that builds up.

However, even resource managers take time off! When they do, replacing their skills is not easy! In larger firms, knowing who to assign a project to becomes difficult (if not totally untenable) without a solid foundation of data-driven tools.

Let's take a look at the characteristics (skills and certifications) for William Michaels. William can do a multitude of things for the firm, as we see in the following screenshot:

Figure 6.7 – Team member characteristics

William also works in two roles, with two different billing rates for customers, as illustrated in the following screenshot:

Figure 6.8 – Team member roles

...

Direct versus centralized staffing models

As a practice manager, director, program manager, operations manager, or operations officer, you are undoubtedly going to have interaction with the Project Operations system. Depending upon your resourcing models, you may get directly involved in resourcing, or this may be handled through a resource manager. Following are some key differences:

Table 6.1 – Differences between direct staffing and centralized staffing model.

In both models, we are placing team members on a project to perform work. In a direct model, this is performed through institutional knowledge of a person or people. In a centralized model, this is performed with systems, databases, and team member recommendations. For either approach, we will need to review the overall governance related to staffing.

Using resource forecasting

Resource forecasting is the forward view of your practice utilization. It is not a firm prediction of what exactly a team member will work on, but is instead is a plan of what they should work through in the next timeframe.

As you may recall, team members have roles and skills assigned to them that provide you with the ability to assign them to a project based upon those filters. Once a team member is booked, their calendars and work week should reflect bookings that have been made. Therefore, based upon their utilization goals, you should be able to view the proper utilization of your team members.

The following screenshot shows the utilization of our team members across a monthly timeline:

Figure 6.9 – Schedule board forecasting

The schedule board forecast shown in Figure 6.9 is purely an hours-driven view of the forecasted utilization of your team. The implications of this forecast drive revenue, whether working a...

Using revenue forecasting

As we discussed (or hinted at) in the Using resource forecasting section, time equals money. I think we have heard this before, right? Time is money, though regardless of the type of contract being worked on in the professional services firm. To accentuate this, let's look at a few contract types and talk about the time equals money axiom. Some typical contract types are outlined here:

• Time and Material contracts: When billed after conducting the work, each hour worked turns into an hour billed. There are variations for tracking Work in Progress (WIP) that help a firm attain Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP)-compliant financial reporting. Furthermore, revenue may or may not be recognized right away, depending upon other accounting factors. However, you can be assured that over time, time will equal money.
• Fixed-price contracts: When billed out, a fixed-price contract may have revenue billed upfront and/or billed in milestones...

Resource utilization tracking

Resource utilization tracking is a historical look at the time entered into the system and approved for your team members. As team members receive their project assignments, they will count on these assignments to translate to time-entry capabilities in the system.

When a team member enters their time in the system, it will go through the process of entry, submission, and approval by the project manager. When the project manager approves the time, the hours will show in the Resource Utilization screen available from the Resources or Projects areas of the system. In the following screenshot, you can see an example of missing time entries, which may help you identify who needs to have a reminder of time-entry policies:

Figure 6.16 – Resource utilization chart

Note that this view is available to be included or not included in the Security section, so you can keep this information confidential.

The view shown in Figure...

Summary

In this chapter, we engaged with the practice management needs of the Project Operations system by first taking a look at staffing models and how they are constructed. There are a number of decision points within this chapter that will drive the overall productivity of the system.

As we look into direct staffing models, we see that a practice manager will typically use this model to directly staff team members based upon project fit, team member skills, and experience.

Centralized staffing requires a lot more setup, but enables a resource management office to take data-driven information and match team members to projects.

Resource forecasting provides a practice manager with a forward-looking view of the team's performance. Resource forecasting allows a practice manager to see which problems may come up in the future. It also allows a resource manager to see the same problems, and provides a forum to drive resource matching.

Resource utilization shows how...

Questions

1. In the Project Operations system, which staffing model involves practice managers or others directly assigning work to team members?
2. True or False: Backlog is the total work under contract (booked work) to be worked and billed.
3. Team member ___________ and ____________ result in a team member (resource) being scheduled to work on a project.
4. True or False: Currently, Project Operations does not provide for delegated time entry.
5. Roles in the Project Operations system drive which three major functions?
6. Skills and certifications are both stored in which Dynamics 365 CE entity?
7. Which filter is NOT part of the Schedule Board?

   a) Roles

   b) Characteristics

   c) Quality of Work

   d) Territory

8. What type of forecast is resource forecasting?
9. This type of forecasting combines contract types to give you information to drive the practice.
10. Resource ____________ tracking provides you with a historical look at hours entered and approved, as well as an awareness...