Resource Allocation and Planning in Single and Multi-Project Environments

IT projects often fail to be completed on time, on budget, within scope, with the required functionality and error free. The reasons for project failure are numerous and have been well studied and identified in the literature; however, most studies assume that project managers are completely devoted to the execution of the project and disregard any time wasting efforts that keep them from these duties. One such duty is the assignment and tracking of personnel to tasks within a project. As workers become over-allocated, the PM must redirect his or her efforts to balancing the overall schedule. This task is often performed manually causing PMs to spend much of their time attending to the details of the schedule instead of dealing with the issues critical to the project. The author describes here software that optimizes the schedule when resources are limited and describe its use in both single and multiple project environments.