Measuring Utilization - Ginsu Report
To see holidays and time off in the Ginsu report you must check the appropriate box on the parameters tab.
Additional Resources
The Topic of the Day: Utilization webinar is a great resource to learn about managing and measuring resource utilization with Projector. (go to 14:21)
The Ginsu report enables customized utilization reporting in two flavors:
- You can report utilization as a percentage of a resource's expected work hours (the Utilization Basis Hours). Utilization is the best metric for understanding how busy the organization is given the organization's capacity. However, utilization doesn't apply at a level below the resource level. If you report on utilization, you will see the utilization for each resource, and the number of hours each resource works on specific projects. But you won't see how busy a resource is on a project-by-project basis.
- You can report on resource equivalents. A resource equivalent (RE) is similar to, but not the same, as an FTE. The RE is one if the resource is 100% utilized. If the resource works half-time on a project, then the RE for that project is 0.5. The RE for a group of resources is the sum of the REs for each resource. Therefore, if one person's RE is 0.75 and the other's is 1.0, then the total RE is 1.75. Resource equivalents allows you to understand how busy a resource is on each project, as a fraction of that resource's capacity. FTEs are different in that they allow you to understand capacity in terms of the capacity of a "typical" resource, meaning someone that works the normal working hours of a location, without considering any resource-specific non-standard working schedule, such as someone that works only 4 days each week. RE reporting is only available in the Ginsu report. FTE reporting is only available in the Utilization report.
The Ginsu report, unlike the Utilization report, lets you see both the utilization and the projects, holidays, and time off that contribute to the utilization. By selecting which projects to include in the report you can control the numerator in the calculation. For example:
- To compute billable utilization use the parameters tab to include billable engagements only
- To compute utilization based on projects with a UDF of a specific value, run the report and filter the pivot table based on the UDF value
The utilization fields are explained in the table below:
Field | Description | |
|---|---|---|
Normal Working Hours | Hours that the resource normally works each day of the week. This is determined by the resource's location work schedule, but can be overridden for each resource. | |
Working Hours | Normal Working Hours - Holiday Hours - Timeoff Hours | |
Utilized Hours | Hours worked on projects. It does not include holiday or timeoff hours. Therefore to exclude the hours from a project (e.g., one that is non-billable) you must exclude that project from the report. | |
Utilization Basis Hours | The denominator for the utilization calculation, as determined by the RDC basis (e.g., Normal Working Hours, Normal Working Hours - Holiday Hours, or Normal Working Hours - Holiday Hours - Timeoff Hours). | |
Utilization | Utilized Hours / Utilization Basis Hours, shown as a percentage. Aggregates to higher levels by summing Utilized Hours and Utilization Basis Hours separately, then then dividing. | |
Net Available Hours | Working Hours - Total Hours. If the number is positive then the resource has hours available for other projects. If negative then the resource is overallocated. The total net available hours for a period greater than a day may be positive even if the resource is overallocated on some days. Or may be negative even if the resource is available on some days. | |
Net Available Hours Percent | Net Available Hours / Working Hours, shown as a percentage | |
Resource Equivalents | Utilized Hours / Utilization Basis Hours, shown as a fraction. Aggregates to higher levels by summing. |
Utilization is a property of a resource, not of a project. So all of the above fields, except for Utilized Hours are defined for each resource, but not for the projects worked on by the resource. When the report shows data for a project the normal working hours, working hours, utilization basis hours, etc. will be zero. Only the total for the resource will contain the utlization percentage. You will also see a special utilization row with Hours Type = "U" (U = Utilization) that contains the resource-based data, such as Normal Working Hours. The project code for these rows will be marked with "<<Utilization>>".