2 management - School of International Business and ...

221 Project Management
– Check the time and logical dependencies and remove the dependencies which are not
absolutely necessary. Sometimes one can discover by looking more closely that one or
the other dependency is not absolutely necessary, and simply remove it.
– Split the activities into smaller activities which can be carried out in parallel. Note: too
many parallel activities increase the risk that the project will not be completed in time
– Check into the time estimations for the activities on the critical path.
– Reclassify these activities if it helps the schedule.
– Have several people do the same activity at the same time. Note: Take into account the
higher communication and agreement efforts required for this. Sometimes, fewer people
work faster together, because they don't have to spend as much time coming to agreement.
– Shift resources and use the most-experienced worker in the activities on the critical path.
Make sure as well that the project manager takes as few activities as possible on the
critical path. If there are unforeseen difficulties, you could end up with two large problems
at the same time.
– Move workers from non-critical tasks to activities on the critical path. Non-critical activities
have a buffer time, so that they can be accomplished without extending the entire project's
duration.
– If all of these moves are not sufficient, plan a step-wise sequence for the project in order to
be able to deliver the most important segments of the project earlier. Thus the total dura-
tion of the project is not shortened, but your customer already has a portion of the "end
product" available early.
Optimizing resource approaches (people and money)
Look for overloading and underloading (free capacities), and level these. PM tools offer this as
an automatic function, but the results are sometimes surprising, and difficult to understand. It's
better to do this optimization by hand.
The following are some tips for optimization:
– Compare the resource utilization by shifting the non-critical activities. Using buffer times
for these activities, you also have room for maneuver for shifting without changing the total
project duration.
– Ensure that the team has constant work loading.
– Bring in other resources from the outside in order to cover peaks, e. g. people from other
groups and areas, temporary help, sub-contractors, etc.
– Reflect on the technologies used. Newer technologies can increase workers' effective-
ness, but they also have additional training and break-in effort associated with them.
Known technologies, even if they don't seem ideal, are often a better solution with short
projects with low budgets.
– Increase the capabilities of your project team members with appropriate continuing edu-
cation. This investment often pays for itself during the project.
– Estimate to what degree people, departments, planning firms or manufacturers can take
over workloads during the time, and whether additional capacity is possible.