Software Project Management
Fifth Edition
Chapter 8
Resource
allocation
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Schedules
• Activity schedule - indicating start and
completion dates for each activity
• Resource schedule - indicating dates
when resources needed + level of
resources
• Cost schedule showing accumulative
expenditure
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Resources
• These include
– labour
– equipment (e.g. workstations)
– materials
– space
– services
• Time: elapsed time can often be reduced
by adding more staff
• Money: used to buy the other resources
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Resource allocation
• 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 activities and
examine the resource histogram
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Resource histogram:
systems analysts
5
STAFF REQD.
WEEK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7
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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
etc
• 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
5
STAFF REQD.
WEEK 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
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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:
• Shortest critical activities
• Other critical activities
• Shortest non-critical activities
• Non-critical activities with least float
• Non-critical activities
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Resource usage
• need to maximise %usage of resources
i.e. reduce idle periods between tasks
• need to balance costs against early
completion date
• need to allow for contingency
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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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Allocating individuals to activities
The initial ‘resource types’ for a task have
to be replaced by actual individuals.
Factors to be considered:
• Availability
• Criticality
• Risk
• Training
• Team building – and motivation
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Cost schedules
Cost schedules can now be produced:
Costs include:
• Staff costs
• Overheads
• Usage charges
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Cost profile
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Accumulative costs
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Balancing concerns
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