Chapter 11: Building an Enterprise Resource Pool

Overview

Building a well-structured enterprise resource pool enables you to use Project Server’s important new resource management features. I’ve mentioned some of these already. Project Server’s new resource management technology builds on the resource engine Microsoft acquired from E-Labor.

Outline codes play a major role in crafting your portfolio, and the enterprise resource pool is no exception. The promise of meaningful output from the system is completely dependent on these. Before proceeding with building your pool, you should have created your outline codes and custom fields. You should also know where your existing resource data is coming from, whether you create it manually or import it.

Whether you pull this data from Active Directory, Exchange, Outlook, Excel, or from any other source, chances are you’ll be doing significant manual updating. This is mostly due to the fact that the outline codes and custom fields you’ll use are very likely to be new constructs to your organization. Those that aren’t new to your organization may come from disparate sources. I’ll admit to some degree of pessimism in the previous statement, but I recommend that you give thought to this when allocating time to build your pool.