1) How does multitasking confuse the resource availability of project team personnel?
2) “In modern organizations, it is impossible to eliminate multitasking for the average employee.” Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?
3) Because of the problems of multitasking, project managers must remember that there is a difference between an activity’s duration and the project calendar. In other words, 40 hours of work on a project task is not the same thing as one week on the baseline schedule. Please comment on this concept. Why does multitasking “decouple” activity duration estimates from the project schedule?
This case highlights some of the critical issues that students must absorb in terms of the relationship between project activity scheduling and resource availability. Many firms require that their project team members engage in so many different projects at the same time (i.e., multitasking) that resource assignments are no longer viable because they do not recognize the over-committed nature of their resources. The old adage, “40 hours duration is not the same as one week’s work,” illustrates this point. If we can assume that a project resource can fully devote her time to one project, then the “40 hours duration” argument above changes – it is, in fact, one week. However, the more projects that are added to any plate, the more difficult it becomes to clearly determine resources needs.