MANAGING PROJECT RESOURCES

PRESENTED BY Toyin Osunlaja Gozde Kilinc And Ercin Sen

OBJECTIVES
After this presentation you will be able to: Understand what resources are, and the types of resources that are typically available Appreciate the importance of managing project resources, and their effect on the project duration Apply project resource management tools and techniques for managing project time.

What are Resources?

Resources are commonly thought of as sources of supply or support, such as money, people, materials, technology, and space. For information system projects, more specific resources may include system developers, project managers, system analysts, stakeholders, development environments and information.

Types of Resources
There are two primary types of resources used in information system projects namely: Human Resources Capital Resources

Human Resources
Human resources :is personnel pool available to an organization. The most important resources in any organization its human resources. Appropriate human resources assure an organization that the right number and kind of people are available at the right time and place so that organizational needs can be met.

Human Resources (Cont)

Human Resources include all project stakeholders, such as customers, project team members, support staff, project suppliers and end users. In Information Technology, human resources consist of :
System Analysts System Developers System Programmers..etc.

Human Resource Management

Human Resource Management: is the strategic function performed in an organization that facilitates the most effective use of people(employees) to achieve organizational and individual goals. The person that manages Human resources is called Human Resource Manager or Personnel Manager.

Role of a Human Resource Manager.

The role of a HRM is: Acquiring Human Resources Maintaining Human Resources.
Training and Development Performance Appraisal Rewards and recognition Retention and Replacement. Human resources planning Recruitment Selection and Screening Orientation.

Note: You can find more information about Human resources on our page!!

Capital Resources
Capital Resources can be defined as the tools and infrastructure used to produce other goods and services. While the range of assets that can be considered to be a capital resource is very broad, it is important to note that not all assets are capital resources. There are a few basic qualifications that govern what assets can properly be referred to as a capital resource.

Capital Resources(cont.)
One of the basic criteria for an asset to be considered a capital resource relates to the long-term use of the asset in the production of goods and services. In general a capital resource will be anticipated to aid in the creation of products for an extended period of time.

Capital Resources (cont.)

The management of capital resources is particularly important when considering opportunity costs. Opportunity costs are a measure of the alternative opportunities forgone in the chose of one good or activity over others.

Managing Resources
Efficient and effective use of resources can often make or break a project. Because resources are limited some hard to be obtain ,expensive or both. The allocation of resources can have a major influence on project schedules. For ex: limited programmers effects time, cost , quality , risk management.

Implications of Failure
To correct a delay error, project manager can assign aditional resources to the task to get back on schedule this is known as crashing, but even this helps cost too much sometimes. When planning a project , managers first decide on the deliverables of the project and the activities needed to produce them.

Implications of Failure(cont.)
The next step is to estimate resources needed. Combination of resource needs and availability helps to determine the time needed for entire project. It should be considered during the initiation, planning, execution, and closeout phases of a project.

Duration vs Effort
Effort is the actual time spend on working on an activity.

Duration is elapsed time between the start and finish of an activity.

Activity Resource Estimating

The goal of activity resource estimating , is to estimate the resources needed for each activity so they can be deployed in the most effective manner.
Resource availability Activity sequencing Copmleted project schedule with durations

Resource needs Managing resources

Resource Estimation Techniques

One of the primary tools of pj resource estimating is expert judgement. Expert judgement is estimation based on the experience of one or more experts on the particular activity or project. Another source of hard data is published estimating data hard data from specific activities carried out on previous projects that may be used to more accurately estimate resource needs.

Resource Estimation Techniques(cont.)

When estimating activity resources, it is often advisable to conduct some form of alternatives analysis an estimating technicals in which trade ofs between the time needed the resources invested and the desired quality of the final deliverable are examined.

Resource Estimation Techniques(cont.)

Also bottom up estimating is a technique applied when the resource needs of an activity can not be easily estimated. The primary output of the activity resource estimating process is a detailed listing of the resource requirements.

Resource Estimation Outputs

Activity resource requiements is a very detailed listing of the resource requirements for the individual activities. Resource breakdown structure is a hierarchical ,graphical representation of all needed resources ordered by type or category.

Resource Estimation Outputs(cont.)

Resource calender is a specific type of project calender that is used to track the hours when certain resources are available. Activity duration estimation is the process of estimating the duration of the project activities using both project scope and resource information.

Duration Estimating Techniques

Analogous estimating is the estimation of activities durations based upon the duration of similar activities. Parametric estimating is the estimation of activities durations using some type of mathematical process. Three- point estimates- are the estimation of activities durations by averaging the optimistic,pessimistic and most likely estimates .

Reserve Analysis
Reserve analysis technique used to establish contingency reserves during a project to guard against potential risk.

Schedule development:
Schedule development : is an iterative process designed to determine start and finish dates for project activities. During the process of schedule development activity duration estimates combination with the activity sequences are used to establish the final project schedule.

Input Schedule Development

Input Schedule Development includes: -organizational process assets -project scope statement - Activity list (which also includes activity) - Activity attributes -Project network diagrams - Resource requirements - Resource calendars - Activity duration estimates and Risk Register

Organizational Process Assets

Organizational process assets can be as simple as a project calendar and easily calculate working and non working days. Example: in holidays, personal time off, overtime or standard working time.. For this often developed using Microsoft project or collaboration tools ex: outlook or share point such as Microsoft project can be used to record and display resource.

Risk Register
Risk register specifies how control measures will be implemented to identify potential risks to project schedule. For example ,if the risk is high that a new mainframe computer will not be installed on time.

Schedule development techniques

The Schedules Developments Techniques includes: network analysis critical path analysis schedule compression what-if scenario analyze critical chain method.

Schedule network analysis

Schedule network analysis: aids to managers in determining when activities can be performed given resources and constraints so network diagrams have to be analyze for any errors in network.

Critical Path Analysis

-Critical path analysis: critical path is to established have quickly a project can be completed given the tasks, durations and dependencies in network diagram.

Critical Path (cont.)

critical path method uses the 2 concepts Free float: the time an activity can be delayed without affecting the immediately following activity Total float: the time an activity can be delayed without affecting the overall completion of project

Schedule Compression
Schedule compression: in schedule compression use mathematical techniques to shorten project`s duration These techniques are known as Crashing: dedicated extra resources to particular activity. Fast-tracking: This looks at possibility of performing activities.

What-if Analyses
What-if analyses: This method is a process of evaluating alternative strategies by observing how changes to selected factors affect other factors so take advantage of logic network by scenarios.

Critical Chain Method

Critical chain method: the longest path through a network diagram, considering both task dependencies and resource dependencies and when using the critical chain method, the critical path is first identifies, independent of resource availability. When using any of these techniques, a project manager should always monitor project and resource calendars (times)

Schedule Development Outputs

Outputs include updates to resources requirements, project calendar, or the project management plan and schedule management plan, supporting details and resource requirements updates.

The schedule development outputs process include:

A preliminary project schedule: Show the start and finish dates for each activity so it contains schedule network diagrams. Schedule model data: Provide managers with additional information about resource requirements and alternative schedules. Schedule baseline: Once the schedule has been finalized and approved, it becomes the schedule baseline. This baseline, which shows the set of original start and finish dates.

Schedule Control
The last process within the Project Time Management knowledge area is schedule control. In schedule control, the process of putting rules in place for controlling changes to the project schedules and schedule control process include updates to the schedule model data, schedule baseline , the activity list or project management plan.

Conclusion
We have discussed the fundamentals, characteristics challenges, related to allocating resources, estimating activity, and project durations and developing the schedule with start and end dates. In addition, we also identified types of resources and how they influence the estimation of task durations