Managing Project Cost and Time Term Paper

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Project Management

The objective of the study is to carry out the analysis on chapter 8 and 9 of the book titled "Project Management, the Managerial Process." (Larson, & Gray, 2010 p.iv). The chapter 8 of the book discusses the strategy the project manager could schedule resources and costs. On the other hand, the chapter 9 carries out analysis on the strategy to reduce project duration.

Larson, & Gray, (2010) discusses in their book that the project manager often faces challenges in developing an appropriate project scheduling and the chapter discusses the strategy that the project manager could employ to develop a project's resource schedule. Within an organization, there are often more projects than available resources, thus, the priority is to select projects that could contribute to organizational efficiencies. Faced with the project's constraints, it is critical to schedule resources to make a realistic judgment from the available resources and tight project durations.

Larson, & Gray, (2010) identify type of resources constraints as:

Technical constraints which are the "constraints related to the networked sequence in which project activities must occur." (Larson, & Gray, 2010, p 255) .

Physical constraints are related to the environmental conditions, and Resource constraints are related to shortage of resources used to sequence project activities. Resources constraints include materials, people, and equipment.

Larson, et al. (2010) classify people as human resources who bring skills to the success of a project and the human resources include mechanical engineer, programmers, inspector and welder. The combination of the skills of human resources could add to the complexity of project's scheduling. Materials and equipment are also resources that need to be used to complete a project and shortage of these resources may delay a timely completion of a project. Most mistakes those stakeholders make is to assume that resources will be adequate for the project, however, recognition of these constraints before starting a project can assist the project manager to avoid a costly delay.

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Larson & Gray (2010) classify scheduling problems as:

"Time-constrained project" (p 257) imposed to ensure that projects are to be completed at due date.

"Resource-constrained project" (p 257) shows that resources are fixed and cannot exceed available resources and inadequate resources is likely to delay the project.

Resource allocation methods include limiting assumptions, where the project manager cannot change the level of resources to be used for an activity and "splitting activities is not allowed-once an activity is starts, it is carried to completion." (Larson, & Gray 2010 p 257).On the hand, smoothing resource demand involves resources level technique to smooth resources to minimize fluctuation in resources demand. Botanic Garden is another resource allocation method where backhoes are required during project lifecycle. The fig 1 reveals the examples where the backhoes are required for the resources allocation methods. The figure 1 shows the use of 4 backhoes from 4 to 10 activities periods.

Fig 1: Example of Botanic Garden

Source: Larson, & Gray, (2010).

As being revealed in the Fig 2, the project manager can focus on the activity with the least risks of project delay. For example, the project manager can start from the period 10 instead of period 4; the project manager will be able to reduce the number of backhoes by 25% from 4 to 3.

Fig 2: Example of Botanic Garden

Source: Larson, & Gray, (2010).

Benefits of resources allocation are that it minimizes the fluctuation in resources demand. Moreover, it reduces resources allocated to the project lifecycle. However, the shortcoming of resources allocation method is that "it increases the criticality of more activities." (Larson, & Gray, 2010, p 260) .

Larson, & Gray, (2010) identify splitting activities as scheduling techniques to obtain a better project schedule because it assists in better utilization of scarce resources by achieving resource-constrained schedule.

"Resource scheduling also provides information for time-phased work.....

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