Project Scheduling and Resource Management

Presentation by: Dinesh K. C. III semester, MBA

In this Presentation
What is scheduling? Project Scheduling. Importance of Project Scheduling. Methods of Scheduling Resource Resource Management Importance of resource management

Introduction
A project is a collection of tasks that must be completed in minimum time or at minimal cost.

Project Schedule
Split project into tasks and estimate time and resources required to complete each task Organize tasks concurrently to make optimal use of workforce Minimize task dependencies to avoid delays caused by one task waiting for another to complete

Contd..

Contd..
Objectives of Project Scheduling

Completing the project as early as possible by determining the earliest start and finish of each activity. Calculating the likelihood a project will be completed within a certain time period. Finding the minimum cost schedule needed to complete the project by a certain date.

Scheduling problems
Estimating the difficulty of problems and hence the cost of developing a solution is hard

Common myth: If we fall behind schedule, we can always add more programmers and catch up later in the project

Productivity is not proportional to the number of people working on a task Adding people to a late project makes it later because of communication overheads

OBJECTIVES FOR SCHEDULING

EFFECTIVE TIME MANAGEMENT OPTIMZE SEQUENCE OF EVENTS DEFINE NECESSARY RESOURCES MONITOR PROJECT PROGRESS

PRIMARY COMPONENTS IN A PROJECT SCHEDULE

ACTIVITIES

SPECIFIC FUNCTION FINITE DURATION DETERMINE LINKAGE SPECIFY RESOURCE REQUIREMENTS

The PERT/CPM Approach for Project Scheduling

The PERT/CPM approach to project scheduling uses network presentation of the project to

Reflect activity precedence relations Activity completion time

PERT/CPM is used for scheduling activities such that the projects completion time is minimized.

Gantt Charts
Gantt charts are used as a tool to monitor and control the project progress. A Gantt Chart is a graphical presentation that displays activities as follows:

Time is measured on the horizontal axis. A horizontal bar is drawn proportionately to an activity s expected completion time. Each activity is listed on the vertical axis.

In an earliest time Gantt chart each bar begins and ends at the earliest start/finish the activity can take place.

Gantt ChartsMonitoring Project Progress

Graphical notations used to illustrate the project schedule Show project breakdown into tasks. Tasks should not be too small. They should take about a week or two Activity charts show task dependencies and the critical path Activity Bar charts show schedule against calendar time

Gantt Charts Advantages and Disadvantages

Advantages.

Easy to construct Gives earliest completion date. Provides a schedule of earliest possible start and finish times of activities.

Disadvantages

Gives only one possible schedule (earliest). Does not show whether the project is behind schedule. Does not demonstrate the effects of delays in any one activity on the start of another activity, thus on the project completion time.

Contd..

Benefits of Resource Scheduling

If project delay is unacceptable, it allows sufficient time for considering alternatives such as cost-time trade-offs and changing of priorities. Provides information to prepare timephased work package budgets with dates Enables project managers to determine the amount of flexibility they have over certain resources.

Resource Allocation Problem

A shortcoming of most scheduling procedures is that they do not address the issues of resource utilization and availability. Scheduling procedures tend to focus on time rather than physical resources.

Resource Allocation Problem

Schedules should be evaluated not merely in terms of meeting project milestones, but also in terms of the timing and use of scarce resources. A fundamental measure of the project managers success in project management is the skill with which the trade-offs among performance, time, and cost are managed.

Resource Management in Projects

Resource management is one of the key corner stones of project management. If a project manager excels in resource management, then he has 50% of project management challenges solved, and the project manager needs to concentrate on the remaining 50% to get the project completed on time & on budget.

Importance of resource management

Resources cost money, and not having the right resources at the right time upsets the schedule. In complex projects - especially non-IT projects, there are several types of resources that needs to be managed: Equipment, supplies, machinery, people, land, clearances etc. These resources cost money to procure. If the lead times are too short, it costs more money to get the resources. So it pays to look ahead in the project planning stage and make proper plans to procure the required resources in a timely manner for the lowest cost. Changes to the cost of the resources has a big impact on the viability of the project, therefore resource management also impacts cost management.

Components of Resource management

1. Effort Estimation 2. Resource Identification 3. Lead time to get required resources 4. Resource Utilization 5. Resource Tracking

Effort Estimation
Effort Estimation is the first step in project planning. Essentially the project has to be broken into smallest possible work packages and a project plan is made based to meet the delivery date. Project manager needs to know the type of efforts involved & the resources needed for that to start the estimation process. Next step is to prepare the estimates. The best way to get the estimate is to talk to the actual persons who will be doing the work. Talk to the people and ask for three estimates: average, pessimistic & optimistic.

1. Break the project down into smallest possible set of tasks - also called work packages. 2. Talk to the persons who will be doing the work to get a range of estimates 3. Validate the estimate with experts & historical data 4. Determine the way the estimates are recorded and presented to customers & stake holders 5. Roll up all the estimates and present the pessimistic estimate to customers 6. Hammer all the caveats and assumptions into customer's mind along with the estimates

To Summarize the exercise of resource estimation is as follows:

Resource Identification
Every single work package in the project should have resources identified with. In the initial stage of the project, if resources for each work package is not identified and assigned for that, then that's a major gap in project planning, and the project plan is not complete nor it should be shared outside to customers.

Contd..
It is the role of the project manager to work with the stake holders to get resources for each work package. In most cases, not all the resources are identified and allocated at the start of project, so from planning perspective this denotes a risk & hence a contingency resource identification must also be done during the planning stage.

Lead Time for Resources

Resources are always scarce and must be carefully used. In most cases, resources will be committed to the project at the beginning of the project, but it is the duty of the project manager to know the lead time needed to get the required resources and plan things accordingly.

The resource schedule should list the following:

1. Resources needed 2. Duration of the need 3. Lead time for procuring/booking the resources 4. Remainders/reconfirmations schedule for ensuring that resources to be made available. 5. Cost of resources & cost variations of resources. 6. Ramp-up time for the resources - i.e, time needed for the resource to be fully effective

Resource Utilization
Resource utilization refers to the plan on how the allocated/available resources are utilized in the project. Often times people succumb to the pressure and get into over utilization of resources: i.e., make people work overtime to complete the tasks, overload/overuse machinery etc. Over utilization of a given resource is not a standard plan. No project manger should plan for overloading of resources in the initial project plan. The project plan must account for normal usage of the resource.

Resource Tracking
Once the resource planning, resource schedule is done and the project is under way, the project manager must track the actual usage/consumption of the resources and compare against the plan. The actual usage must be captured into the system and this helps in refinement of future project plans. During the project estimation time, people have a tendency to tell things which their managers like to hear - thus giving an overtly aggressive estimate or a conservative estimate. But when the actual efforts are tracked against the initial estimate and the variances are discussed openly in the project meetings, people tend to become more realistic in the future projects.

Contingency Planning
Resources are always scarce & hence there is always a possibility of required resources not being available to the project. It is therefore a good practice to add resource contingency into the resource estimates to guard against resource scarcity. Resource contingency is something that's added to the initial estimates to guard against things requiring more work than expected or simply to reflect the fact that the estimate is not reliable. It is good practice to add contingency to individual work packages. In some cases, contingency is added en bloc in form of additional work packages.

To conclude
Project managers are measured primarily on the delivery of projects. To deliver projects on time and on budget, one needs to have a very tight control on the resources and time scales. Resource management is the key for successful projects delivery and resource utilization tracking is a key metric in measuring the quality of the project plan, monitoring the project status and this helps in taking any corrective steps.

References
John M. Nicholas, Project Management for Business and Technology, II ed., Pearson Education, New Delhi, 2002. Prasanna Chandra, Projects, V ed., McGraw Hill, New Delhi, 2004. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schedule_proje ct_management http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu