Resource

Allocation
Lect. Nadia Khan

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 Resource
Allocation
• Lecture Outline: [TB1, CH-
08]

o Nature of Resources
o Identifying Resource
Requirements
o Scheduling Resources
o Resource Scheduling Techniques

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 What is a Resource?
• A resource is a necessary asset whose main role
is to help carry out a certain task or project.
• A resource can be a person, a team, a
tool, finances, and time.
• Most projects require many different resources
in order to be completed.
• Resources should be assessed and allocated
before a project begins.
• Poor resource planning can result in running out
of resources midway through a project,
delaying deadlines, and delivery of the final
product or service.

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Figure: Resource allocation is carried out as Step 7

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 Introduction- Schedules
• Activity schedule - indicating start and
completion dates for each activity

• Resource schedule - indica ting dates when

resources needed + level of resources

• C ost schedule - showing accumulative

expenditure

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 Resource Allocation
• Resource allocation helps you to choose the best
available resources for your projects and
manage them throughout the work, so you can
avoid under or overutilization of your employees.

“In project management, resource allocation or

resource management is the scheduling of
activities and the resources required by those
activities while taking into consideration both the
resource availability and the project time”

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 The nature of Resources
• These include
o labor
o equipment (e.g. workstations)
o materials
o space
o Services
o Time: elapsed time can often be reduced by adding more staff
o Money: used to buy the other resources

o A key point is that money (by definition) is the means by which

one resource can be converted to another.

 Note: study details of these from page 176 of text book.1

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Identifying Resource Requirements

• Identify the resources needed for each activity

and create a resource requirement list.

• Identify resource types - individuals are

interchangeable within the group (e.g.
‘VB programmers’ as opposed to
‘software developers’)

• Allocate resource types to a ctivities and

examine
the resource histogram.

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 Case study (IOE Project)
• Amanda has produced a precedence network for
the IOE Project. See figure 8.2 on book page
no.177.
• Use this as a basis for a resource requirement
list, which is shown in table 8.1 on book
page 178.
• At this stage, she has not allocated individuals
to tasks but has decided on the type of the
staff that will be required.
• The activity duration assume that they will
be carried out by “standard analysts or
software developers”.
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Identifying resource requirements
(IOE Case study)

Figure :The IOE precedence network

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 Cont..
• At this stage, it is necessary that the resource
requirement list be as comprehensive as
possible.

• It is better that something is included that may

latter be deleted as un -necessary than to omit
something essential.

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Figure : Part of Amanda’s bar chart and resource histogram
for Amanda’s analyst-designers

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• In the previous figure (bar chart) there are white and
shaded
rectangles .
• White rectangles indicate when an activity is scheduled.
• Shaded rectangles indicate the total float.

• Float, also known as slack, is a term that describes how

long you can delay a task before it impacts the planned
schedule and threatens the project’s deadline.

• When you are collecting tasks for the critical path, they must
have zero float. But if the tasks do have some float, then
they go on the non-critical path, which means if this task is
delayed the project can still finish on time.

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 Scheduling resources
• Having produced the resource requirements list,
the next stage is to map this on to the activity
plan to assess the distribution of resources
required over the duration of the project.

• This is best done by representing the activity plan

as a bar chart and using this to produce a
resource histogram for each resource.

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Example : system
analyst

Figure 2: Part of Amanda’s bar chart and resource histogram for analyst-designers

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Resource histogram: Systems Analysts
• The resource histogram helps us identify
where the demand for a resource exceeds the
supply.
• If we use a tool such as MS Project, the
tool will generate the resource histograms
for us.

Figure 3: Resource histogram before smoothing

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 Resource smoothing
• It is usually difficult to get specialist staff who
will work odd days to fill in gaps – need for staff
to learn about application e.t.c

• Staff often have to be employed for a

continuous block of time

• Therefore desirable to employ a constant number

of staff on a project – who as far as possible are
fully employed

• Hence need for resource smoothing

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 Resource smoothing

Figure 6: A resource histogram showing demand for staff before and after smoothing
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 Resource clashes
• Where same resource needed in more than one
place at the same time

• can be resolved by:

 delaying one of the activities
• taking advantage of float to change start date
• delaying start of one activity until finish of the other activity
that resource is being used on – puts back project
completion

• moving resource from a non-critical activity

• bringing in additional resource - increases costs

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 Prioritizing activities
• There are two main ways of doing this:

• Total float priority – those with the smallest

float have the highest priority

• Ordered list priority – this takes account of the

duration of the activity as well as the float – see
next overhead

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 Burman’s priority list
• Give priority to:
o Shortest critical activities
o Other critical activities
o Shortest non-critical activities
o Non-critical activities with least
float
o Non-critical activities

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 Creating critical path
• Scheduling resources can create new
dependencies between activities – recall
critical chains

• It is best not to add dependencies to the

activity network to reflect resource constraints
 Makes network very messy
 A resource constraint may disappear during the project, but link
remains on network

• Amend dates on schedule to reflect resource

constraints

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Figure : Amanda’s project scheduled to require three analyst/designers
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 Counting the cost
• The discussion so far has concentrated on
trying to complete the project by the earliest
completion date with the minimum number of
staff.

• Doing this places constraints on when activities can be

carried out and increases the risk of not meeting target
dates.

• Alternatively, Amanda could have considered using

additional staff or lengthening the overall duration of
the project.

• The additional costs of employing extra staff would need to

be compared to the costs of delayed delivery and the
increased risk of not meeting the scheduled date. 24
 Being specific
• Because of the nature of software
development, skill and experience play a
significant part in determining the time taken
and potentially, the quality of final product.

• It makes sense to allocate individual members

of staff to activities as early as possible.

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 Allocating individuals to activities
• The initial ‘resource types’ for a task have to be replaced by
actual
individuals.
• Factors to be considered:
o Availability – who is free? Note that this will change during the
course of the project as some tasks are completed earlier or
later than planned
o Criticality – You would want to put your more experienced,
‘safer’, staff on the critica l activities
o Risk – this is similar to the point above, but some activities
could be off the critical path but still have risks e.g. to the
quality of subsequent products
o Training – despite concerns about minimizing risk, it is healthy to
take some risks in order to develop staff capabilities by
allocating challenging tasks to relatively inexperienced staff.
o Team-building – identifying people who work well together can
pay dividends; chopping and changing plans all the time may
in theory optimize project performance, but can in practice
be demotivating for staff 26
 Publishing the resource schedule
• In allocating and scheduling resources we
have used the activity plan, activity bar
charts and resource histograms.

• They are not the best way of publishing

and communica ting project schedules.

• For this we need some form of work plan.

(see
Figure)

• After creating the work plan, it is possible to

transfer some of the information from the work
schedule to the precedence network (see
Figure ) 27
Publishing the resource schedule

Figure : Amanda’s work schedule

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 Cost schedules
• Cost schedules can now be produced:

• Costs include:

• Staff costs includes not just salary, but also social security
contributions by the employer, holiday pay etc. Timesheets are
often used to record actual hours spent on each project by an
individual. One issue can be how time when a staff member is
allocated and available to the project, but is not actually working
on the project, is dealt with.

• Overheads e.g. space rental, service charges etc. Some

overheads might be directly attributable to the project; in other
cases a percentage of departmental overheads may be
allocated to project c osts.

• Usage charges: some charges can be on a ‘pay as you go’ basis

e.g. telephone charges, postage, car mileage – at the planning
stage an estimate of these may have to be made

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 Cost profile

Figure 11: Weekly project cost

• This shows how much is going to be spent in each week. This

could be important where an organization allocates project
budgets by financial year or quarter and the project straddles
more than one of these financial periods
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 Accumulative costs

Figure :Cumulative project costs

The project manager will also be concerned about planned accumulative costs.
This chart can be compared to the actual accumulative costs when controlling
the project to assess whether the project is likely to meet its cost targets.

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 Scheduling sequence

Figure :successful project scheduling is not a simple sequence

• Successful project scheduling is not a simple sequence.

• Because of the inter-linking of different concerns project
planning will need to be iterative. The consequences of
decisions will need to carefully assessed and plans adjusted
accordingly.

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 Summary
• In this lecture we have discussed the
problems of allocating resources to project
a ctivities and the conversion of an activity
plan to work schedule.
• In particular, we have seen the importance of
the following:
o Identifying all the resources needed
o Arranging activity starts to minimize variations
in resource levels over the duration of the
project
o Allocating resources to c ompeting activities
in a
rational order of priority
o Taking care in allocating the right staff to 33