12.1 Consider a project to build a bridge over a river gorge. What are some of the resource constraints that would make this project challenging?

12.2 For many projects, the key resources to be managed are the project team personnel. Explain in what sense and how project team personnel are often the project's critical resource.

12.3 What is the philosophy underlying resource loading? What does it do for our project? Why is it a critical element in effectively managing the project plan?

12.4 It has been argued that a project schedule that has not been resource-leveled is useless. Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why or why not?

12.5 Discuss the nature of "time/cost trade-offs" on projects. What does this concept imply for our project management practices?

12.6 When resource-leveling a project, several heuristics can help us prioritize those activities that should receive resources first. Explain how each of the following heuristics works and give an example:

Activities with the smallest slack

Activities with the smallest duration

Activities with the lowest identification number

Activities with the most successor tasks

Activities requiring the most resources

12.7 Multitasking can have an important negative impact on your ability to resource-level a project. When team members are involved in multiple additional commitments, we must be careful not to assign their time too optimistically. In fact, it has been said: "Remember, 40 hours is not the same as one week's work." Comment on this idea. How does multitasking make it difficult to accurately resource-level a project?

12.8 Why is resource management significantly more difficult in a multiproject environment? What are some rules of thumb to help project managers better control resources across several simultaneous projects?

Read the following case and answer the questions:

CASE STUDY 12.1 The Problems of Multitasking An eastern U.S. financial services company found itself way behind schedule and over budget on an important strategic program. Both the budget and schedule baselines had begun slipping almost from the beginning, and as the project progressed, the lags became severe enough to require the company to call in expert help in the form of a project management consulting firm. After investigating the organization's operations, the consulting firm determined that the primary source of problems both with this project in particular and the company's project management practices in general was a serious failure to accurately forecast resource requirements. In the words of one of the consultants, "Not enough full-time [human] resources had been dedicated to the program."

The biggest problem was the fact that too many of the project team members were working on two or more projects simultaneouslya clear example of multitasking. Unfortunately, the program's leaders developed their ambitious schedule without reflecting on the availability of resources to support the project milestones. With their excessive outside responsibilities, no one was willing to take direct ownership of their work on the program, people were juggling assignments, and everyone was getting farther behind in all the work. Again, in the words of the consultant, "Project issues would come up and there would be nobody there to handle them [in a timely fashion]." Those little issues, left unattended, eventually grew to become big problems. The schedule continued to lag, and employee morale began to bottom out.

Following their recognition of the problem, the first step made by the consultants was to get top management to renegotiate the work assignments with the project team. First, the core team members were freed from other responsibilities so they could devote their full-time attention to the program. Then, other support members of the project were released from multitasking duties and assigned to the project on a full-time or near full-time basis as well. The result, coupled with other suggested changes by the consultants, was to finally match up the project's schedule and activity duration estimates with a realistic understanding of resource needs and availability. In short, the program was put back on track because it was finally resource-leveled, particularly through creating full-time work assignments for the project team that accurately reflected the need to link resource management with scheduling.12

Questions How does multitasking confuse the resource availability of project team personnel?

"In modern organizations, it is impossible to eliminate multitasking for the average employee." Do you agree or disagree with this statement? Why?

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?