Week 4 Project

Resource Loading and Leveling

So far in this course, the assumption has been that the project manager determines the activity time estimates in ways discussed earlier.

The project manager uses several techniques to directly estimate how much time every activity in the project scope will take.

Once the schedule is set, resources can be allocated for various activities. Resources include money, labor, material, and information. However, so many projects are

mainly driven by the cost of available labor that labor hours often are used as the single most useful measure of choice. The problem with this approach is that it is only at this point when the project manager may realize to allocate resources to the schedule. This can result in huge gaps of labor hours in some periods of time and huge

overages in others. When that happens, it is wise to level resources by rearranging the schedule. Rather than having half the project's allocated people remain mostly idle

for a week and then work overtime the next week, it would be wise to schedule things in a way so that everyone has a level load of work to do each week and everyone

works at an even rate. You can imagine the same kind of thing happening whether you are scheduling labor or materials, but human problems are especially troublesome

to manage.

Another common problem occurs when the critical path becomes longer than the time originally allowed for the completion of the project. For example, in the original project charter there may be a deadline stipulated before the planning even started. When that happens, either as part of the planning process or later during the

execution phase, a common solution is to crash the project.

Crashing the project is the idea that assigning more labor to critical project activities will reduce the project duration. Crashing will shorten the scheduled project

completion time. However, crashing involves spending more money to get something done quickly in anticipation of reducing time or resource cost elsewhere. The smart

thing to do is to look for the most economical ways to integrate crashing, one step at a time. As this is done, the cost of crashing can rise exponentially. Imaginative ways of

rearranging precedence relationships are needed.

Resource-constrained scheduling starts with project schedules being constrained by available resources, not available on time. When project schedules are made, it is possible to actually miss the point and estimate activity duration expressing how long it will take to complete the activity.

An activity's duration is constrained by the amount and type of resources available for completion and the rate at which resources are consumed. Resources are

independent variables, and time is the outcome or dependent variable. Simple mathematics transforms resource consumption into an estimate of time as the dependent

variable.

For example Microsoft Project consists of software wizards to be used in correct order, instead of shortcutting the wizards and entering time estimates directly into

Gantt charts, which can be done easily. The software wizards will not prompt you for an estimate of how long, in increments of time, an activity would take. The wizards ask what resources are available and their rates of consumption. The wizards never ask for a duration estimate, because that is not the input (independent) variable.

Additional Materials

Project Management Overview (media/week4/SUO_MGT3035%20W4%20L3.pdf?_&d2lSessionVal=aVaTmfHd5UkmjmVnoP1XalSFd&ou=85477)

View a Pdf Transcript of Resource Constrained Scheduling (media/week4/SU_MGT3035_W4_L6_G1.pdf?

_&d2lSessionVal=aVaTmfHd5UkmjmVnoP1XalSFd&ou=85477)

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