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156 PRACTICAL RESOURCE SCHEDULING

adjust the loading and schedule. Optimal scheduling is a reiterative process and
will usually require user intervention. This is one of the advantages to using the
computer for this function. You can test a scenario—say, what-if—and try various
combinations until you accept a solution.

When testing various scenarios, you can also try different combinations of
ranking criteria, activity splitting, re-profiling, and so on, depending on what fea-
tures are supported by your software.

Tip If the resource leveled schedule is satisfactory through
the first six months of the project, but indicates problems fur-
ther out into the future, you may as well accept the result
and move on. The future is likely to be too dynamic to try to
lock-in a resource loading plan that far in advance. If your
tool supports it, you can instruct the system to level the re-
sources only out until a specified date, rather than until the
end of the project.

A Design for Optimized Resource Scheduling

What if you really want the computer to assist you in developing an optimized, re-
source limited schedule? What should we be looking for, in the way of a practical
and efficient method? It seems to me that all we would need is a combination of
functions that are already available in various project management software pack-
ages. If we buy the premise that realistic resource leveling should be short term
and interactive, why couldn’t we have the following set of functions in our re-
source scheduling system?

• Use the Parallel method algorithm (or one of the best-fit processes).
• Specify the limited time span to apply the algorithm.
• Specify the preferred ranking criteria.
• Allow activity splitting as a task-level option (and overtime).
• Allow activity stretching or reprofiling, or contouring (selective).
• Employ an interactive window for user override.
• Provide a resource table or spreadsheet view (to view several resources at

once).
• Provide an undo function, to facilitate what-if experiments.
• In a multi-project environment, it would be useful to be able to designate re-

sources as assigned or available to specified projects, at specified proportions.