Resource hierarchy

A resource hierarchy is the tree that organizes everyone the studio plans against. The root is the studio or business unit. Branches typically go through department, then trade or discipline, then named individual. A 3D animator might sit under the Animation department, the Senior 3D animator trade and a single person record. Generic resources sit at the trade level so unfilled demand has somewhere to live without being attached to anyone in particular.

The hierarchy is what makes capacity rollup possible. The same underlying allocation records can be summed at the individual level for personal schedules, at the trade level for forecasting, at the department level for budget conversations and at the studio level for executive views. Without a clean hierarchy, those rollups have to be reconciled by hand each time, which is the failure mode most spreadsheet-based plans hit once a studio passes 30 to 40 staff.

Related: trade hierarchy, department rollup, executive view.