Discussion

Discussion Question: You create person loading charts for the three members of a research team you’re managing for the next month. For this project, a full-time commitment is 40 hours a week. However, you find that team member #1 is committed 40, 45, 60, and 30 hours per week; team member #2 is committed 40, 40, 20 and 20 hours per week; team member #3 is committed 60, 40, 60 and 20 hours per week. Assuming your team members are similarly qualified, what are some options you have for resource leveling to avoid over committing resources? (p. 243 of Project Management Textbook)

As per the text (Portny, 2008, p. 218) project managers can use various techniques to level resource and avoid resource overcommitment, these include:

  • Allocating time unevenly over the duration of one or more activities.
  • Taking advantage of any slack time that may exist in assigned activities.
  • Reallocate work from overallocated resources to under allocated resources.
  • Add additional resources to the project.
  • Leverage external labor (i.e. – vendors or contractors) to offload work from overallocated resources.

I this example resources #1 and #3 are clearly overcommitted.
Resource #1: 40 + 45 + 60 + 30 = 175 / 4 = 43.75 avg/hrs/wk
Resource #2: 40 + 40 + 20 + 20 = 120 / 4 = 30 avg/hrs/wk
Resource #3: 60 +40 + 60 + 20 = 180 / 4 = 45 avg/hrs/wk

Above we can see that between resources #1 and #2 there is an aggregate overcommitment of 8.75 hrs/wk while resource #2 is under committed by 10 hours per week. In this case, the most straightforward solution given that all the resources are similarly qualified is to reallocate work from resources #1 and #3 to resource #2 leveling out the resource allocation across the three available resources.

References

Portny, Stanley E. (2008). Wiley Pathways Project Management, 1st Edition. Wiley Higher Ed. Kindle Edition.

 

Assignment

Cause and Effects Diagram were discussed on the video this week. Develop a Cause and Effect Diagram that pertain to the development and launch of a new corporate Web site which requires team members to have very specific programming skills.

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