Question14

ALLOCATING RESOURCES IN MULTI-PROJECT PROGRAMS: LESSONS LEARNED FROM THE TRENCHES

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 analysts 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 analysts 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 projects 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

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projects 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 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 multiproject situations with interproject and intraproject resource management

requirements. The field of project management has successful techniques for managing the intraproject resource

allocations. Diligence and adaptation of these skills will help increase the chances of successfully managing complex,

multi-project environments.

Adapted from: Clements and Gido (2011).

13.1 Citing examples from the case study, discuss common problems associated with managing multi-project resource

schedules.[10]

13.2 Examine the changes that were implemented to help solve the problems encountered in this project and in other

projects, and discuss five other useful project resource management tools that could have been used.[15]