Question

1.Make a Gantt Chart for a Resource Scheduling Diagram that illustrates a possible issue with limited resources that are not available?

2. Make up an example “what if”- some of the project team get the flu at the same time, for instance?

3. Your diagram should illustrate how much of the resource is needed over a short period of time, that there is not enough of the resource, and possible options to keep the project as close to schedule or budget as possible.

4. With a short paragraph discussing possible resource issues in your project?

Answer 1

1. Consider the Gantt chart shown below. First of all, every task needs to be passed through two machines (M1 and M2) in a series and there is only one worker to handle each of the machines. This is a typical example of resource constraint.

2. Next during the period of 21-24 we see that the worker at M1 has a flu. This means that the Load 5 is delayed by 4 days due to unavailability of the worker. This sets back the schedule of the entire system by 4 days.

3. The diagram shows that the flu has infected worker 1 at machine M1 and he will be unavailable for the 4 periods. This means that the only option given the limited resource is to wait for the worker to get better and return to work.

4. While planning a project there can be various types of resource issues. While availability of workforce is a common example, the resources are not necessarily restricted to human beings. Consider the above example and we can notice that instead of flu if the machine M1 had a breakdown that would cause similar delay in the project. In addition to such resources, we must also consider the skill to tool matching within the project. For example worker 1 can only work on machine 1 and worker 2 on machine 2. This kind of situation adds to the[DS1] complexity of resource management in projects.

[DS1]