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OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Resource Planning
• Resources affect the schedule, cost and performance of a project.
• Resources are– Individual people, departments/teams, machines/tools, material.
– There could be many of these, how do we know which ones to plan for?
• Resource planning covers:– Assigning resources to activities;
– Understanding the effects of limited resources on the project schedule.
– Seeing the contribution of resource costs to the overall cost.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Resource Planning
• Almost always there are more project proposals than can be handled by the available resources.
• Schedules created without taking resource limitations into account are bound to be wrong.
• There is always a need to determine the impact of starting a new project on the availability of resources.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Resource Planning
• A useful tool for assigning specific project responsibilities to personnel is the project responsibility matrix
Tasks R.B. D.A. K.A. L.Q. E.R.Identify target customers R S SDevelop draft questionaire R S SPilot-test questionaire R SFinalize questionaire R S S SPrint questionaire RPrepare mailing labels RMail questionaires RReceive & monitor returned questionaires R SInput response data RAnalyze results R S SPrepare draft of report S R S SPrepare final report R S
Project Team
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Resource Planning
• In more complicated projects R.M. can have more detail.– In addition to Responsible and Support, as above, there
could be Consult, Notify, Approval.
• Thus, R.M.s outline, responsibility, authority and communication within the organization.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Cost Planning
• Types of costs in a project:– Direct costs: labor, materials, equipment, etc.
• chargeable to a work package.
• Represent actual cash outflows that are paid as the project progresses.
• These are costs of resources. The cost of an activity (work package) the sum of the costs of resources it uses.
– Project overhead costs• Cannot be tied to any specific deliverable but serve the entire
project.
• Examples: project manager, consultants, training, travel.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• Time estimates for work packages (thus the entire project) is done by the implicit assumption that resources would be available.
A
B
C D
A B
C
D
A BC D
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• The scheduling problem of the project can be formulated in two different ways:– Minimize the duration of the project subject to resource
constraints that can not be violated. (a resource-constrained project model)
– Minimize the resource use subject to an imposed due-date constraint. (a time-constrained project model)
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• Some simplifying assumptions to tackle the resource scheduling problem.– Activities can not be split (no preemption).
– Level of resource used by an activity is given and cannot be changed.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• For a time-constrained project a common scheduling objective is resource leveling.– Reducing peaks and valleys of resource requirement to
obtain a more or less even resource use throughout the project.
– The general approach• Create an early-start schedule
• Delay some activities to even out the resource use.
– Drawback: loss of flexibility due to reduction in slack.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• Consider the following example where there is only a single resource. Given resource requirement is per period. Project deadline is 12.
Legend:Act. (dur’n, res. req)
A(2,2)
B(6,2)
C(4,2)
D(2,1)
E(2,1)
F(4,1)G(2,1)
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources• Early-start schedule and resource profile
Act RES ES LF TS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
A 2 0 2 2 2
B 2 2 10 2 2 2 2 2 2
C 2 2 6 2 2 2 2
D 1 2 10 1 1
E 1 6 10 1 1
F 1 6 10 1 1 1 1
G 1 10 12 1 1Total Resource Load 2 2 5 5 4 4 4 4 1 1 1 1
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• Levelled resource schedule (any other alternative?)– maximum resource requirement down to 4 from 5 (20% decrease)– resource utilization increased to 34/(12*4)=71% from 34/*12*5)=57%
Act RES ES LF TS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
A 2 0 2 2 2
B 2 2 10 2 2 2 2 2 2
C 2 2 6 2 2 2 2
D 1 2 10 1 1
E 1 6 10 1 1
F 1 6 10 1 1 1 1
G 1 10 12 1 1Total Resource Load 2 2 3 3 4 4 4 4 3 3 1 1
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• For the previous example, let’s assume there are only 3 units of the resource available.– To obtain a schedule for which maximum resource
requirement is less than or equal to 3 for all time periods, we will have to accept a delayed project.
– Resource-constrained project scheduling problem is a combinatorial problem. Hence, even medium-sized problems have too many feasible solutions.
– Algorithms to find optimum schedules exist but are very technical and can solve problems with around 50 activities.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
– A common approach for solving such complicated problems is to use heuristics (algorithms that generally give good solutions, but not necessarily the optimum).
– One heuristic type for resource scheduling is “forward scheduling”.
• Define: an activity is startable if all its predecessors are complete.
• Idea: Schedule startable activities as early as possible without resulting in a resource constraint violation.
• Problem: If there is a set of startable activities which cannot all be started without violating the resource constraint, at least one of them must be delayed. Question: which one(s)?
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
• The answer to the above question is the use of priorities.
– Some scheduling priorities• Minimum slack
• Shortest duration
• Lowest activity identification number
– If there is a tie in one priority, the next one is used to break the tie.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
A(2,2)
B(6,2)
C(4,2)
D(2,1)
E(2,1)
F(4,1)G(2,1)
2 2
Startable tasks: A
Act RES ES LF TS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
A 2 0 2
B 2 2 10
C 2 2 6
D 1 2 10
E 1 6 10
F 1 6 10
G 1 10 12Total Resource LoadResource available 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
A(2,2)
B(6,2)
C(4,2)
D(2,1)
E(2,1)
F(4,1)G(2,1)
Time = end of period 2Startable tasks: B; C; DSlacks: (10 – 8) = 2; (6 – 6) = 0; (4 – 4) = 0
2 2
Act RES ES LF TS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
A 2 0 2
B 2 2 10
C 2 2 6
D 1 2 10
E 1 6 10
F 1 6 10
G 1 10 12Total Resource LoadResource available 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
A(2,2)
B(6,2)
C(4,2)
D(2,1)
E(2,1)
F(4,1)G(2,1)
Time = Startable tasks: Slacks:
2 2
Act RES ES LF TS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
A 2 0 2
B 2 2 10
C 2 2 6
D 1 2 10
E 1 6 10
F 1 6 10
G 1 10 12Total Resource LoadResource available 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Scheduling Resources
A(2,2)
B(6,2)
C(4,2)
D(2,1)
E(2,1)
F(4,1)G(2,1)
Time = Startable tasks: Slacks:
2 2
Act RES ES LF TS 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
A 2 0 2
B 2 2 10
C 2 2 6
D 1 2 10
E 1 6 10
F 1 6 10
G 1 10 12Total Resource LoadResource available 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Critical Chain Approach
• Eliyahu Goldratt’s approach (the author of The Goal)
• People have a tendency to overestimate the time required for an activity. They usually report 80 to 90th percentile to increase their chances of on-time completion.
• Paradox: Then why are so many projects late?
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Critical Chain Approach
• Goldratt’s claims the reasons to be: – Work fills available time.
– Organizational disincentives for reporting activities finished early.
– Early finished activities may not lead to early start of successors because resources (people etc.) may not be available for an early start.
– Excessive multi-tasking delays the completion of individual activities.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Critical Chain Approach• Goldratt’s solution
– make sure people use the 50th percentile as activity time estimates.
– Insert “time buffers” (or safety time) at parts of the schedule where there might be problems.
– Three types of time buffers are recommended:• Project time buffer: to deal with the delay of the activities on
the critical path.• Merge time buffer: added where non-critical paths merge the
critical path.• Resource time buffer: to account for the delay of an activity due
to a scarce resource required not being available.
OPSM 639, C. Akkan
Critical Chain Approach
Schedule A (with 50th percentile durations)
Schedule B (after inserting buffers to Schedule A)
resource buffer merge buffer project buffer
Schedule C (50th percentile durations inflated by approx. 30% to 40%)