Frequently Asked Questions - abstract resources

Abstract resources (or types of recourses) are nonfinancial recourses that are not associated to real appointments yet. I.e. “business analyst” is an abstract resource, but business analyst John Black is personalized “resource”.

Abstract resources are used if the project has no resource constraints (besides financial ones maybe) or level of importance of these constrains is lower than another ones (see 1 in the figure)

For the same reason abstract resources have no schedule of availability because it is supposed that the project will be provided with these resources as needed.

Standard performance and cost are defined for abstract resources to be used for project planning.

Later abstract resources will be personalized when the register of resources is forming i.e. they get its names (see 2 in the figure). Standard performance and cost should be met when selecting candidates.

 Note: if there is defined resource pool in company these resources are not abstract and each resource has its availability schedule.