Bryce Power Tool Company Kevin Ertle is the director of information technology (IT) for the Bryce Power Tool Company. A decision was made recently to upgrade Bryce’s legacy systems to a comprehensive ERP system. The president of Bryce has indicated that he expects the modernization program to result in a significant improvement in new product time to market. Ertle is concerned with the possibility that his department will not have adequate resources to support the upgrade.
Kevin believes he has enough staff to handle the aggregate IT requirements, but he is not too sure he will be able to supply the proper IT personnel at the times and quantities requested by the company’s project managers. To complicate matters further, the upgrade will be under the control of four different business unit project managers. Each major market segment has been recognized as a separate business unit with the authority to select IT subsystems for their segment based on a schedule that makes sense for it. Kevin knows a little bit about resource allocation techniques. He remembers that one of the most effective allocation techniques is to work first on the activity with the minimum slack, so he has instructed his staff to approach any tasks they are assigned as members of a project team on that basis.
Is this technique a reasonable way to schedule the IT resources of Bryce? Why or why not? What complication is added by making this four separate projects?