Simultaneous management of multiple projects or a portfolio of projects has become the reality for the project

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Simultaneous management of multiple projects or a portfolio of projects has become the reality for the project managers employed by the Department of Defence. Allocating resources in a single project have been addressed and have adequate solutions. Managing multiple projects that utilise the same resources is complex and requires resource management techniques that are effective and can identify key resource conflicts and priorities. Recently, a software requirements analyst was assigned 200 hours of work on a project with a five-week period of performance. High-level cycle milestones were shared with the analyst. The two deliverables were to be addressed simultaneously. The first deliverable, developing the functional requirements, was planned to require 120 hours of work. The second deliverable, assisting with the creation of a systems design document, was planned to require 80 hours of work. The analyst reported that the tasks and the deliverables could be completed in the time frames.
The first task, to meet with three different business units to solicit input and prepare a document of existing processes, was scheduled for one week. The analyst’s examination of existing processes to prepare for the meeting revealed that no current documentation existed. The analyst communicated the situation to the project manager, and it was decided to create the documentation with developers. Over the next two weeks, while working to create the documentation, the analyst realised that 10 business units were required to have input. These stakeholders were located throughout the country. A meeting was scheduled to have half of the stakeholders meet face to face with the other half on a conference call. The initial one-week task had expanded into two weeks of developments and the coordination of 10 stakeholders’ schedules over the next two weeks. The first task took four weeks. The total time for the analyst’s part of the project was to take five weeks!
The developer team could not start development of the project until the functional requirements document was prepared and approved. The development tasks were scheduled to take 12 weeks. At four weeks into the project, the functional requirements document was not ready for the development team to begin work. During the delay, a developer identified possible methods to increase resources that could reduce the time for development from the planned 12 weeks to 3 weeks. The reduction in time would give the project manager 6 weeks of slack to meet the project goals. Despite the initial three-week delay in the first task, the project manager reported the project’s overall status as being on schedule within the acceptable variance of planned targets. Additional delays in the development of the functional requirements and creation of the systems design document did occur due to the large number of resources that needed to be managed and were assigned to multiple projects. The seven additional business units did not have a person assigned to work on the project. The project manager had to work with the program managers to determine the impact of this project’s critical path on other projects. The system that supported the resource allocation process failed due to its inability to display the true capacity of the resources available for the multiple projects.
Four specific changes were implemented to help solve the problems encountered in this project and in other projects; the problems were not unique to this particular project. During the initial stages, there had been failures to determine the true
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program capacity. The supply and demand for the resources needed to be well estimated and include a margin of error for capacity planning. Project resource tracking was used for each project, and the system did not support a program-level time-tracking of the resources. An integrated enterprise-resource planning system was used to take into account the inter-project requirements for the resources. In some cases, a simple spread sheet was all that was needed to track the resources involved in the multiple projects. Program-level task tracking was not reported; project managers made only summary reports for each project for resource pools. Project and program managers began to examine the task requirements and tracking to avoid unnecessary resource conflicts including performing resource estimate variance.
Calculations of the effort required to complete tasks and calculating earned value. The project managers determined critical paths in their network activities for individual projects only. A critical path analysis tool was implemented to perform mathematical algorithms required to schedule complex project activities. The project managers had to be sure to define the tasks in their projects with enough detail for each task; it was necessary to have a calculation of the true effort for each resource on the tasks. Without the level of detail, the system could not assess the conflicts and develop a risk-mitigation strategy. The complexity and pace of project and program management is expected to continue to increase and lead to more challenging multi-project situations with inter-project and intra-project resource management requirements. The field of project management has successful techniques for managing the intra-project resource allocations. Diligence and adaptation of these skills will help increase the chances of successfully managing complex, multi-project environments.

QUESTION 1 (30 MARKS)
1.1 What are the key issues being raised in the case study relating to resource management for multi-project programs?
(10 Marks)
1.2 In light of the case study, discuss some of the factors that have contributed to project delays and provide solutions on how these could have been avoided. (10 Marks)
1.3 A critical path analysis tool was implemented to perform mathematical algorithms required to schedule complex project activities. Do you consider this as the most effective project resource management tool? Justify your answer and use relevant examples.