[2.1,2.2] Consider software projects flowing through three main activities: requirement planning, development, and testing/implementation. Three different types of resource-types (employees) are needed at each step: analysts for requirement planning; programmers for code development and testers for system testing. There are 2 analysts, 1 developer and 3 testers. Software projects arrive at the rate of 4 per month (30 days). A project typically takes 10 days for requirement planning, 6 days for code development, and 16 days for testing/implementation.

(a) What is the process capacity in projects per month? (show all work). Which resource-type is the bottleneck? What is the utilization of each resource-type?

(b) Suppose user-training work is a new activity that must be carried out on each project. It is supposed to take 2 days for each project. Which of the three resource-types should perform this activity and what is the new process capacity?

(c) For this part, include user-training work in your calculations. There may be additional work (more than current process capacity) available in the market and, therefore, the firm wants to increase its process capacity. First idea is to re-train a tester and assign him to development work. Would you recommend this idea and why? The second idea is to cross-train this tester to do any kind of work. What is your process capacity under the second idea (make any necessary assumptions)? Finally, the third idea is to cross-train all employees so that each employee can do any kind of work. What maximum process capacity can be theoretically achieved under the third idea?