We’re proud of what we’ve built and how we help our customers manage their businesses. We have some accolades to back it up. Tempus Resource has consistently ranked high for many Gartner® Critical Capabilities™ of Adaptive Project Management and Reporting.

Gartner Critical Capabilities: Capacity & Resource Management

According to the Resource Management Institute, the growth and popularity of the ever-evolving world of resource management is attributable to companies realizing “the many benefits of better managing supply and demand of human capital.” While businesses can gain insight into capacity issues and significant challenges in the way of achieving a project or product’s success with an efficient resource management solution, many companies first must come to realize the strategic value of resource management and capacity planning, and put in place the right people, budget and tools to make it a reality. In this article, we’ll be focusing on the importance of the right resource management solution.

Gartner® defines capacity and resource management as “the ability to aggregate resources, categorize by role, set thresholds and use these resources to constrain investments, programs, projects or small work item inventories.” For organizations to be able to analyze and properly allocate their resources, a resource portfolio management solution is key.

While many consider Resource Management (RM) and project portfolio management (PPM) similar, what sets them apart is critically important for successful project management. Most PPM tools focus largely on the tasks required to execute a project. While PPM may take into account multiple projects, it is still structured to evaluate projects based on their individual requirements as opposed to how those requirements could create conflict across other projects in your portfolio. RM tools take a holistic view of the entire project portfolio by broadening the planning horizon beyond task-based planning and focusing instead on how resources are being allocated and utilized throughout the organization, incorporating workload into the planning process. Project managers need to bridge resource management together with capacity planning. Capacity planning looks at the big picture of whether an organization has the person capacity and skill sets required to fulfill the demand of programs and projects. This is typically a strategic planning process that looks months or years ahead, taking time, skills, and demand into consideration.

The best solution for resource management and capacity planning need to have:

• Resource capacity planning tools
• Project forecasting
• What If analysis
• Time tracking
• Customizable reporting
• Skills management

Tempus Resource, which was recently recognized for its leadership in resource management with its inclusion in the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ of Adaptive Project Management and Reporting, gives customers a single platform for all resource management and strategic decision-making activities. Tempus ranked first in Capacity and Resource Management, a key area of the Magic Quadrant. Tempus gives customers the flexibility to create projects and allocate employees based on individual and changing enterprise needs. Tempus provides resource managers with actionable intelligence, cutting-edge analytics, and real-time scenario analysis, all while minimizing the overhead of managing a resource portfolio.

Gartner Critical Capabilities: Security and User Management

When companies think of audit logs, it’s often correlated to security incidents. However, there are several other benefits to audit logging according to Datadog, including:

• Ensuring compliance with industry regulations
• Troubleshooting system issues such as outages or user errors
• Evaluating new security and audit procedures for proactive security enhancements

To be successful with resource management and capacity planning, security and user management protocols must be an essential feature of any resource management solution.

While many organizations still rely on spreadsheets to house essential data and reports, keeping a spreadsheet under the control of one person is the opposite of security. It means that you assume only one person has access and control, but without any mechanism for securing your data privacy or integrity. Multiple insecurities live within spreadsheets, which can easily become security breaches as malicious macros that compromise work stations or exfiltrate sensitive information. Resource management teams need security that includes traceability, auditability, entitlements flexibility, and other ways to truly govern your sensitive data.

• Traceability: Most resource management is handled across a team, with different levels of access and authorization, and often spread across different locations. These managers need a centralized tool that can identify and track changes by user for validation and auditing purposes. They also need to be able to edit concurrently with visibility across all users.
• Auditability: With a resource portfolio management solution, organizations can eliminate the bias from single-user access to a spreadsheet, or multiple errors that can arise when spreadsheets are shared and improperly updated across teams. More importantly, the proper platform enables users to focus on accuracy and share the auditing responsibility across the team or business unit.
• Entitlements Flexibility: A role-based security model is integral to any resource portfolio management solution, especially one that has the flexibility to adapt to a wide range of organizational designs and that can provide the ability to configure roles and access policies to control and govern permissions to projects, resources, reports, and other sensitive data.

Tempus Resource scored highest for security and user management in the Gartner® 2022 Critical Capabilities™ of Adaptive Project Management and Reporting. With Tempus, resource management teams have traceability, auditability and entitlements flexibility built into the platform. ProSymmetry invests in providing a secure platform and is a SOC2 Type 2 organization.

Tempus provides the most robust built-in audit logging features in the market without any ability for tampering. Date, time, and user info are recorded along with the before and after of every change made in the platform, so data can be queried and used for advanced reporting and analytical purposes.

Because Tempus works with diverse and enterprise customers, ProSymmetry can provide highly flexible user security and entitlement management capabilities. They support a wide range of organizational designs and patterns ranging from very flat structures to matrixed to multi-matrixed and everything in between. Entitlements can be defined at higher-level groups all the way down to individual users. Further, impersonation options are available with expiration dates to accommodate the flexibility in use.

Gartner Critical Capabilities: Integration

As many businesses continue their digital transformation, more data is being accessed across multiple platforms. In a 2018 study, IBM concluded that as many as 85% of businesses are operating in multiple cloud environments with data shared across many platforms and networks. The study also notes that 59% of businesses reported that separate business units had engaged with various cloud environments, creating a de facto multi-cloud environment. IBM’s findings highlight how successful companies can position themselves for greater competitive advantage with more integration among the many disparate platforms.

Companies benefit not only from cost savings but greater visibility into their data and results by consolidating multiple applications and working toward greater integration. According to InformationWeek, integrating multiple systems and being able to look at data together in one place can help an organization execute more initiatives at scale.

A scalable API is crucial for any resource management solution, as it allows an organization to build its own integrations on its API project management, HR, accounting, and CRM tools. With a scalable API, businesses can have custom integrations that connect their SaaS tools, reduce double entry and automate their processes. Another important piece is the resource management solution having flexible architecture built around bridging resource management with popular PPM tools integrations, integrating their current system into the resource management solution with ease.

Tempus Resource’s open rest-based API is available to all customers at all times, enabling a smooth integration from whatever platform ProSymmetry customers use. The Tempus API can be used to pull project, resource, and assignment data into Tempus. Conversely, users can push the same data out of Tempus into another application for further use and analysis. This flexibility allows ProSymmetry customers to automate their processes, reducing the amount of administrative overhead for a SaaS solution and enabling users to get the most out of their data. Tempus interacts with popular HR software including WorkDay and PeopleSoft, IT ticket management tools including ServiceNow, project management tools like JIRA, Azure DevOps, SmartSheet, MS Project, Microsoft Dynamics, SharePoint and more.

Gartner Critical Capabilities: Project and Work Effort Management

Project management encompasses both the planning stages and managing the work to get the deliverables achieved. Regardless of what project management methodology is chosen – traditional waterfall method or newer styles of lean or agile project planning – having strategic oversight of project management is crucial to its success. PM Today offers four essential elements to achieving “effective, efficient project management”:

1. Clear communication
2. Putting the best team together
3. Taking advantage of outsourcing and working with other businesses
4. Monitoring progress and performance

To accomplish the fourth step, PM Today highlights how project management teams need to collect and use data. When you track progress and performance, you are able to see issues and weaknesses in your work, which helps increase your ability to meet goals and work targets on time. PM Today explains, “It’s also beneficial to use data analysis, auditing and performance evaluation techniques to streamline operations and cut out unnecessary or time-consuming processes and steps.”

Tempus Resource by ProSymmetry scored second-highest for Project and Work Effort Management in the Gartner® 2022 Critical Capabilities™ of Adaptive Project Management and Reporting. Tempus offers customers an unlimited number of project attributes using more than 15 different data types and adjustable layouts to match business processes and preferences. Data from spreadsheets can be easily imported, with the ability to take real-time snapshots of all aspects of a project for future analysis, including project attributes, forecasts, milestones and financials. Additionally, Tempus enables users to manage a team’s time or FTE estimations to ensure the work can get done.

Tempus features including Roadmap Management, Portfolio Planner and What-If Scenario Planning can help project managers take project management to the next level. With Roadmap Management, project managers can easily see their projects grouped by portfolio, priority or another relevant aggregate to better understand where resource bottlenecks will occur before the portfolio work begins. When using the Portfolio Planner analysis tool, project managers can prioritize work and compare it to the team’s capacity. Project managers can answer questions such as when they will run out of full-time team members to complete the work, or when they need to look at outsourcing lower priority projects. Lastly, teams can run scenarios and plan more effectively using Tempus’s What-If Scenario Planning, which provides options and answers about the ways forward and uncovers opportunities within possible disruptions. For example, previously lower priority projects may become viable, or areas may be revealed with more open capacity. Tasks and dependencies are useful for planning the details of a project. Being able to answer the question, “What happens if this critical person leaves the team? What is at risk if we are one person short?,” provides much more potential for success. Additionally, project managers can plan for an upcoming year with confidence that the sequence of work meets priority deadlines and that a team has the people and skills to get it done.

Gartner Critical Capabilities: Reporting and Analytics

An essential component to any organization’s success is monitoring performance and business results through reporting and analytics and using those results to move the business forward. It’s fundamental to have a platform that can provide insight and actionable intelligence to achieve goals with resource forecasting and capacity planning. According to PMStudyCircle.com, performance reports are vital to organizations for many reasons:

• Monitoring performance and ensuring that projects are on track.
• Benchmarking helps businesses stay competitive within their industry and gain a competitive advantage.
• As an important communication tools with key stakeholders.
• External regulatory authorities and clients can require reporting on various projects.
• Helping improve performance with status reports on a project’s progress.
• Transparency to keep all stakeholders on the same page.

Whether a business needs to export data to Excel or requires complex Resource Allocation Reports (RARs), reporting from Tempus Resource provides unparalleled purpose-built project management reports for resource forecasting and capacity planning.

Tempus Resource has a variety of customizable progress reports including shale charts, mountain charts, stacked bar charts, line charts, tables and more. Reports can include both live and what-if model data to generate reporting results that give in-depth current and future insights. Reports can be exported from Tempus to Excel or PDF formats. Additionally, with Tempus’s report security features, users can set reporting permissions for who can view or edit any report.

With Tempus’s Insight+, an advanced dashboard and predictive analytics engine available with Tempus, users can gain an unlimited ability to visualize, report, and drive decisions from resource portfolio management data. Tempus Insight+ standardizes and centralizes advanced dashboarding, report delivery, report-based alerting, report annotation, and analytical insight. Users can create more than a hundred charts, dashboards, and reporting visualizations that are fully customizable and combined with notifications, so users can automatically receive reports delivered to their inbox.

Tempus Resource by ProSymmetry scored in the top half of all companies for Reporting and Analytics in the Gartner® 2022 Critical Capabilities™ of Adaptive Project Management and Reporting. 

Gartner Critical Capabilities: Usability

Anyone who has spent time in the project management software industry can understand why the industry is valued at more than $6 billion in 2021 and is anticipated to top $15 billion by the end of the decade. For many companies, leaders and project managers, the need for a comprehensive resource management solution is well-established. As companies select the right platform, they evaluate many factors ranging from resource capacity planning, project forecasting, time tracking, reporting, and skills management. Additionally, companies must focus on selecting the best platform for ease of use and accessibility for its teams and employees.

Gartner® defines usability as “easy navigation, minimizing the number of clicks to perform functions and providing views without a lot of pop-ups. It also covers drag-and-drop movement of tasks, WYSIWYG, accessibility, HTML5, mobile device accessibility, intuitive configurability and user customization of home UI.” Any resource management platform must be built to maximize efficiency and ease of use for the user. From simple navigation to drag- drop movements, users should have the flexibility to navigate, manipulate and learn from the data.

Tempus Resource brings unrivalled ease of use to users, including:

• A simple grid-like user interface with copy-paste and drag-drop features to provide planning flexibility.
• Ability for users to export data to Excel from almost any data screen.
• Simple creation of more complex Resource Allocation Reports within the platform when generating reports.
• Tempus’s Insight+, an advanced dashboard and predictive analytics engine available with Tempus, means users can gain an unlimited ability to visualize, report, and drive decisions from resource portfolio management data. Tempus Insight+ standardizes and centralizes advanced dashboarding, report delivery, report-based alerting, report annotation, and analytical insight. Users can create more than a hundred charts, dashboards, and reporting visualizations that are fully customizable and combined with notifications, so users can automatically receive reports delivered to their inbox.
• A scalable API that allows users to build their own integrations and work with data from multiple sources.
• Quick setup of projects, including bulk importing from Excel, that enables project managers to move forward more quickly with resource management needs.
• Tempus’s decision management capability, Scribe, that enables users to memorialize and capture key decisions within the platform, enabling more direct communication between users and better understanding of decisions and data within Tempus.

Tempus Resource by ProSymmetry scored consistently in the top third of use case scores in the Gartner® 2022 Critical Capabilities™ of Adaptive Project Management and Reporting, which included an evaluation of Usability. 

Gartner Critical Capabilities: Demand Management

Demand management is commonly defined as a planning methodology that businesses utilize to help gather and prioritize new ideas, projects and needs throughout the portfolio. According to a study published with the Resource Management Institute, demand management is a critical success factor in managing a portfolio, and is most valuable when the process can maximize how it captures “the real strategic commitment of the organization and merge it with the past ongoing activities” to build a company’s portfolio. Once a company has defined its vision and overall strategy, demand management helps companies continue to address that strategy while collecting new ideas and assessing how they fit into the current vision.

Gartner® defines demand management as a capability that “enables users to capture and manage incoming requests (including new ideas or changes to existing work) for planned and unplanned projects. This generally includes approval workflows, and flexibility for various project types, and different styles of project management.” When considering a resource management solution, it’s key that it provides users with the ability to demand plan, including project intake workflows, role or placeholder resources, resource request workflows, and the ability to incorporate skills and competency management.

Tempus Resource offers multiple features to help customers achieve successful demand management, including:

• Project Intake workflows that are designed to shepherd projects through the intake process, including customizable workflows, forms, and dynamic routing with conditionality to save time and improve decision making through easily customizable next step routing. Additionally, Tempus Project Intake workflows help organizations maintain governance by ensuring that each workflow is designed to get the right people involved in decision making about what projects need approval and when.
• Users can define the backbone structure of a new Project Intake workflow with various states, defined as the various stages associated with the workflow including innovation, intake, stage gate, and approval project.
• Resource Request workflows are fast and come with a request process that is fully integrated with a company’s resource forecasts, so implementing any resource management workflow can take minutes to execute. Tempus includes backup approvers to avoid workflow interruptions or delays, with tracking and logging for auditing accuracy.
• With Scribe, Tempus’s decision management capability, users can memorialize and capture key demand management decisions within the platform, enabling more direct communication between users and better understanding of decisions and data within Tempus.
• With role or placeholder resources, set up as Demand Planning Resources in Tempus, both project and resource managers can forecast allocation based on the type of person needed without needing to determine at that planning stage who can actually take on the work.
• With Tempus’s What If Analysis, analyzing the demand, from project ideation to demand resource planning, has never been easier. Whether annual planning or deciding if you can take on new work mid-year, What If scenarios allows you to make informed decisions on the work you take on.

Tempus Resource by ProSymmetry was included in the 2022 Gartner® Critical Capabilities™ of Adaptive Project Management and Reporting, which included an evaluation of Demand Management.