Scheduling Resources

Project management disciplines like cost estimation, project scheduling, resource planning, configuration management, and proactive risk management to avoid the state of wonder why the project is in constant turmoil. Implementation of a minimal process and reliance on staff expertise is not sufficient. 

Identify and schedule resources—people who will run and monitor the pilot, plus customers or other participants. Resources also include physical equipment, rooms, and other enabling tools. When reviewing your resource list, consider the following ... 

The project plan sets out the work steps, schedule, resources, and budget necessary to successfully conduct the project. The plan then becomes the basis for routinely monitoring and measuring progress during project execution and applying appropriate controls, when necessary, to make sure the project stays on track. 

The workplan is balanced when all appropriate resources are confirmed and tui acceptable completion date is determined. The preliminary schedule, resource availability, turd required project-completion date aU need to be brought into balance. 

Because the budget is a projection of project costs, it is based on many assumptions. The compQed budget should be accompanied by a statement of the assumptions made regarding schedules, resource availability, overhead, contingency factors, nonpersonnel costs, and the Uke. 

Pressures Hme, schedule, resource, production, incentive, compensation, political. Pressures can include any positive or negative force that can influence behavior. 

Compatible with SAV Architecture Results of a combination of analysis techniques and reviews/inspections, including modelling and simulation of the properties of the S/W architecture including the executive and scheduler, resource allocation, timing constraints and so on design analysis of dependencies between the function and the S/W architectural properties structured walk-throughs and inspections. 

For instance, nowadays there is still little attention given to the automated data flow of planning and control information, or promoting the business need to the seamless flow of scheduling, resource, materials, and cost information between firms. For practitioners in these industrial environments, time and material planning is very often done in a manual process at the construction site on a stand-alone basis, mosfly assisted by data received by phone calls or on paper. 

The adoption of effective exchange of information regarding planning and control activities (schedules, resources, materials, cost, cash flow) between the different parties involved in B C projects is a critical success factor. It may avoid projects time and costs overmn and assure better quality. 

The technical execution of the project is straightforward once the baseline activities are properly identified, scheduled, resource loaded, and leveled. If planning the work is completed in detail, the only thing left is to work the plan and report on the progress in a consistent manner. Normal reporting utilizes an earned value management system identified under the project management section. 

Capacity decisions are based on forecasts of donand at several different levels. Long-range capacity planning needs forecasts to be made several years ahead and includes facility planning. Short- and medium-term forecasts span 2-3 years, and generally are used to determine people requironents, leasing of premises, machines and equipment, and product details. In the more inunediate short-term forecasts are used to plan, order and schedule resources on a monthly, weekly and daily basis. The shorter the time frame, the more precise the forecast must be. 

Whilst network analysis is a useful tool for estimating timing and resources, it is not a very good means for displaying schedules. Bar charts are used more commonly to illustrate planning expectations and as a means to determine resource loading. 

P. Koton, "SMARTPLAN A Case-Based Resource Allocation and Scheduling System," in Proceedings of a Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning, Morgan Kaufman, San Mateo, Calif., 1989. 

The long-term scheduling is basically a material resources planning (MRP) activity involving the following ... 

Today resource limitations have caused the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) to reassess schedules for new rules. A 1987 USEPA survey indicated there were approximately 202,000 public water systems in the United States. About 29 percent of these were community water systems, which serve approximately 90 percent of the population. Of the 58,908 community systems that serve about 226 million people, 51,552 were classified as "small" or "very small." Each of these systems at an average serves a population of fewer than 3300 people. The total population served by these systems is approximately 25 million people. These figures provide us with a magnitude of scale in meeting drinking water demands in the United States. Compliance with drinking water standards is not... 

A plan is more than a list of goals, a bar chart, or a schedule of activities. For the business plan to be effective it needs to define how the measures it covers are to be achieved and the resources to achieve them obtained. There may well be supplementary plans for this purpose. The plan or plans also need to define who is to be responsible for achieving the goals and implementing the plans. Once this is done and the provisions communicated to those affected, a method of tracking achievement can be put in place. To track performance effectively the implementation of the plan needs to be phased such that target dates are set for the determination and acquisition of resources, the issue of detail implementation plans, the organization of work, and the completion of individual tasks. 

Provide broad schedule parameters Suggest categories of resource requirements... 

It may be useful to consider the program plan, at this stage of its development. as your company s ideal," within the limitations you have established for its scope. By first identifying what is needed, independent of the constraints of time or resources, you emphasize the tasks themselves as the substance of the plan—the core that drives decisions about resource allocations, rather than the other way around. (For example, see Figure 5-7) The result may prompt your team to think more creatively about schedule and resource requirements, as discussed in the following sections. 

Any schedule you develop should reflect both the tasks you have defined and the resources available for accomplishing them. In addition, the implementation schedule in some cases may depend on a predetermined end date. For this reason, schedule and resource requirement tasks should be seen as interdependent it s realistic to expect that you may need more than one iteration before both are firmly established. 

Once you have developed the program plan and schedule, and estimated resource requirements, you should organize this information in a manageable form for presentation to your PSM sponsor. If you have kept management informed about your progress you should have a clear idea of what is expected in terms of form, content, and level of detail. A sample table of contents for a project plan appears as Figure 5-12, and Figures 5-13 and 5.14 provide additional detail on selected portions of the plan. 

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