A capacity management tool for a portfolio of industrialization projects

The management of a project portfolio is a complex decision process because it encompasses the achievement of multiple objectives. A critical point that increases the complexity in the decision-making process of a portfolio manager is the allocation of human resources to manage the projects of the portfolio, project managers, which is crucial to the organization’s performance. In this case, the project manager can manage more than one project simultaneously and it is necessary to assign project managers to the projects, considering that project activities have an amount of work to be accomplished. The main objective of this work was to provide support for this capacity management problem, which aims to provide an easier decision-making process for the capacity management of an industrialization project portfolio. Therefore, it was developed: a hybrid model that creates a schedule respecting the resource constraints and the established due dates; a recommendation system that considers project managers’ allocation and projects requirements; and, an automatic status report that allows identifying the project portfolio capacity usage.This work is supported by: European Structural and Investment Funds in the FEDER component, through the Operational Competitiveness and Internationalization Programme (COMPETE 2020) [Project nº 39479; Funding Reference: POCI-01-0247-FEDER-39479]

Classification of human- and automated resource allocation approaches in multi-project management

AbstractManaging a multi-project environment requires a different method than managing a single project. The main challenge of managing a multi-project environment is the allocation of scarce human resources over the projects in execution. As part of a broader research on this topic, the aim of this paper is to identify different multi-project management approaches in a structured way. Based on this literature review consequences can be derived for future research about this topic. In this literature review, the approaches are classified into two dimensions. One dimension classifies how the decision taking is organized, centralized or decentralized. The other dimension classifies how the scheduling problem is approached, relying on human insights or on optimization algorithms. On the bases of the Iron Triangle of Project Management a comparison analysis of the multi-project approaches methods has been here performed. The outcome reveals that the majority of the approaches sets scope as a constraint and minimize lead-time by optimizing the resource allocation with centralized heuristic algorithms. An exception is the relatively new approach Scrum-of-Scrums, which is a people oriented, decentralized decision-taking approach. Scope optimization is the primary objective of Scrum. Comparing the performance of the different approaches is an interesting field for further study, especially the comparison of automated decisions taking with human decision taking