Project management under uncertainty: Resource flexibility visualization in the schedule

Going from an idea to a result, using a series of well-defined techniques with deadlines and limited resources, is a skill that a project manager must have. In a rapidly changing environment like the present one, there are many factors that contribute to budget overruns and delays that occur in most major projects. To be successful, one must rely on techniques and tools that assist the project manager in the various stages of the project. Therefore, this paper presents an Add-In for MS Project®, based on a previously developed model for solving the Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problem with Flexible Resource Management (RCPSP-FRM), which can help the project manager with regard to the scheduling of resources using flexibility, giving him relevant information to the decision making process in case of delays during the execution phase. The flexible chart and table format view allows project managers to easily and objectively identify the activities which can have their durations increased or shortened, impacting significantly on project execution time. This research contributes not only to the academic environment, but also to professional project management environments.This work has been supported by national funds through FCT –Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologiawithin the Project Scope: UID/CEC/00319/201

Project management under uncertainty: a study on solution methods

Project Management involves onetime endeavors that demand for getting it right the first time. On the other hand, project scheduling, being one of the most modeled project management process stages, still faces a wide gap from theory to practice. Demanding computational models and their consequent call for simplification, divert the implementation of such models in project management tools from the actual day to day project management process. Special focus is being made to the robustness of the generated project schedules facing the omnipresence of uncertainty. An "easy" way out is to add, more or less cleverly calculated, time buffers that always result in project duration increase and correspondingly, in cost. A better approach to deal with uncertainty seems to be to explore slack that might be present in a given project schedule, a fortiori when a non-optimal schedule is used. The combination of such approach to recent advances in modeling resource allocation and scheduling techniques to cope with the increasing flexibility in resources, as can be expressed in "Flexible Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problem" (FRCPSP) formulations, should be a promising line of research to generate more adequate project management tools. In reality, this approach has been frequently used, by project managers in an ad-hoc way

Project management under uncertainty: Solution methods revisited

Project Management involves onetime endeavors that demand for getting it right the first time. On the other hand, project scheduling, being one of the most modeled project management process stages, still faces a wide gap from theory to practice. Demanding computational models and their consequent call for simplification, divert the implementation of such models in project management tools from the actual day to day project management process. Special focus is being made to the robustness of the generated project schedules facing the omnipresence of uncertainty. An "easy" way out is to add, more or less cleverly calculated, time buffers that always result in project duration increase and correspondingly, an increase in its cost. A better approach to deal with uncertainty seems to be to explore slack that might be present in a given project schedule especially when a non-optimal schedule is used. The combination of such approach to recent advances in modeling resource allocation and scheduling techniques to cope with the increasing flexibility in resources, as can be expressed in "Flexible Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problem" (FRCPSP) formulations, should be a promising line of research to generate more adequate project management tools. In reality this approach is frequently used by project managers in an ad-hoc way

Project management under uncertainty: using flexible resource management to exploit schedule flexibility

Project management still faces a wide gap separating theory from practice, especially regarding the robustness of the generated project schedules facing the omnipresence of uncertainty. A new approach to deal with uncertainty is presented to explore slack that might exist in a given project schedule. We propose that renewable resources' capacity to perform work can be increased so that they can perform additional work in a time unit or can be decreased with the consequent reduction on the performed work. This possibility combined with the slack that some activities have in a specific schedule can be used to absorb deviations that might occur during a project's execution. When a critical activity is about to have its duration increased, slowing down other non-critical activities by putting their resources in a decreased work mode enables the activity to still be executed within time by using resources in an increased working mode. [Received: 14 February 2018; Revised: 2 January 2019; Revised: 8 June 2019; Accepted: 17 November 2019

Development of a Framework for Managing Capacities and Schedules in Industrialization Projects: a case study in the automotive domain

ICOPEV2018: 4th International Conference on Production Economics and Project Evaluation | 20 Set. - 21 Set. 2018The behaviour of the current competitive markets makes project management one of the distinctive factors in companies’ success. Its practices have revealed to be crucial in deadlines accomplishment, costs reduction, quality requirements satisfaction, among other benefits. This research was developed as a case study in an automotive company with the aim of developing a framework for visual management of capacities in industrialization projects to tackle overload situations of project managers. The model developed considers industrialization project management a standard process that usually calls for a tipical set of activities, whose duration and effort are defined according to project complexity. The proposed activity scheduling process results from an adaption of Heuristic based Priority Rules, aligned with the problem specifications

Improving risk management practice in industrialization projects: case study of an automotive company

Project-based work is increasingly regarded as a powerful organizational response to the complex challenges of management, being an excellent way to integrate organizational functions with the expectations of stakeholders, with the aim of achieving higher levels of performance and productivity. However, the particular characteristics of projects lead them to be considered risky undertakings, making risk management one of the most important knowledge areas among project management practices. Knowledge management is, in turn, progressively taken into account in risk management, since many of the problems underlying risk management processes arise from scarcity of information or lack of knowledge to understand the existing information. Then, within the scope of risk management, knowledge management can provide learning from past risks in order to simplify and support the management of new risks and decision-making. The case study research methodology was applied at a plant of a first tear automotive industry supplier by using participant observation, document analysis and questionnaires to describe the current industrialization project risk management practice. Then a proposal for a risk catalog in the form of a risk database was developed to integrate information and knowledge in order to promote and support the existing and future project risk management practice

Radiometric characterization of a novel LED array system for visual assessment

Light that enters the eye can be distorted due to several factors leading to a poor visual performance. The purpose of this paper is to describe and characterize the light-emitting diode (LED) display system to be used in a new device to assess visual quality under high glare conditions. The device has a central white LED and surrounding white LEDs distributed in a radial manner. Each LED is controlled independently using special designed software. The spectral power distribution and color of the LEDs were assessed at different voltage intensities to test the response in terms of output luminance and spectral distribution. It was found that the typical maximum luminance was about 2800 cd/m2 and 6 cd/m2 for the central and surrounding LEDs, respectively. Their color was found to be within the ΔE⁄ ab range of 2.6 and 0.23, respectively, if the minimum and maximum intensities are considered. The characterization of this device was proved successfully, which might indicate its usefulness in future visual assessments.This study has been funded by FEDER through the COMPTETE Program and by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) in the framework of projects PTDC/SAU-BEB/098391/2008, PTDC/SAU-BEB/098392/2008 and the Strategic Project PEST-C/FIS/UI607/2011

Stakeholder management in industrialization projects: an automotive industry case study

Stakeholder management is determinant for the sustainable growth of the organizations, becoming a competitive advantage for them. This paper aims to help professionals involved in industrialization projects, by presenting a new systematic approach to stakeholder management. This research was carried out in a professional environment, at the company Bosch Car Multimedia in which Project Management Office managers detected a gap in the process of managing stakeholders in the project management area. Given the increasing number of industrialization projects starting in the company, the development of a systematic approach to stakeholder management is highly important. Having an increasingly active, thoughtful and well-structured stakeholder management, contributes to the achieving of the projects’ success

Project management under uncertainty: A mixed approach using flexible resource management to exploit schedule flexibility

Doctoral Program in Industrial and Systems EngineeringProject management involves onetime endeavours which demand for getting it right the first time. Also, project scheduling, being one of the most modelled project management process stages, still faces a wide gap separating theory from practice. Demanding computational models, and their consequent call for simplification, divert the implementation of such models in project management tools from the actual day to day project management process. Special focus is being made to the robustness of the generated project schedules facing the omnipresence of uncertainty. An "easy" way out is to add, more or less cleverly calculated, time buffers that always result in project duration increase and correspondingly, in increased costs. A better approach to deal with uncertainty can be to explore slack that might exist in a given project schedule, even more when a non-optimal schedule is used, which is what usually happens in practice. The combination of such approach with recent advances in modelling resource allocation and scheduling techniques, to cope with the increasing flexibility in resources, is a promising line of research, in order to generate more adequate project management tools. "Flexible resource profiles Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problem" (FRCPSP) formulations are a step in this direction but a distinct approach can be followed, considering that, apart from being flexibly allocated or not, resources are themselves flexible by nature. More specifically, when renewable resources are considered, their capacity to perform work in a time unit (e.g. a day), which is considered to be one unit for each resource in traditional models, can be increased so that they can perform additional work in a time unit, or it can be decreased with the consequent reduction on the performed work. In reality, this flexibility is frequently considered by project managers. The objective here is to use this possibility so that, when combined with the slack that some activities have in a specific schedule, deviations that might occur during a project's execution can be absorbed. In the most critical case, in which a critical activity (activity without slack) will have its duration increased, the strategy is basically to slow down non-critical activities (activities with slack), by putting their resources in a decreased work mode, so that the critical activity, which is about to have an increase in its duration delaying the whole project, can still be executed within time by using resources in an increased working mode. This thesis analyses this combination, its consequences and limitations and proposes models to generate and enhance starting (baseline) schedules that can take a greater advantage of this approach.A Gestão de Projetos consiste num esforço único que exige que se acerte logo à primeira tentativa. Além disso, o escalonamento de projetos, apesar de ser uma das etapas com mais modelação no processo de gestão de projetos, ainda apresenta uma grande divergência entre a teoria e a prática. Os modelos computacionais exigentes, e o consequente apelo para a sua simplificação, desviam a sua implementação dos processos de gestão de projetos reais. Especial atenção tem sido dada para a robustez dos cronogramas produzidos que enfrentam a omnipresença da incerteza. Uma forma "fácil" de resolver o problema é adicionar buffers temporais, mais ou menos habilmente calculados, que resultam sempre num aumento da duração do projeto e, por consequência, do seu custo. Uma abordagem melhor para lidar com a incerteza pode passar por explorar a folga que possa existir num determinado cronograma, especialmente quando é usado um cronograma não-ótimo, o que geralmente acontece na prática. A combinação de tal abordagem com os recentes avanços na modelação da alocação de recursos e das técnicas de escalonamento, para lidar com o aumento da flexibilidade dos recursos, são uma linha de investigação promissora para se obterem ferramentas de escalonamento de projetos mais adequadas. As formulações FRCPSP ( Flexible resource profile Resource Constraint Project Scheduling Problem) são um passo nessa direção, mas uma abordagem distinta pode ser seguida considerando que, apesar de poderem ou não ser alocados de forma flexível, os recursos são, eles próprios, flexíveis. Mais especificamente, considerando recursos renováveis, a sua capacidade para executar trabalho numa unidade de tempo, considerada unitária nos modelos tradicionais, pode ser aumentada, de forma a executarem trabalho adicional numa unidade de tempo, ou diminuída, com a consequente redução do trabalho realizado. Na realidade, esta flexibilidade é muitas vezes considerada pelos gestores de projeto. O objetivo aqui é usar esta possibilidade para que, quando combinada com a folga existente em algumas atividades num cronograma, os desvios que ocorram durante a execução do projeto possam ser absorvidos. No caso mais crítico, em que uma atividade crítica (atividade sem folga) tenha a sua duração aumentada, a estratégia consiste em desacelerar atividades não críticas (atividades com folga), colocando os seus recursos num modo de trabalho diminuído, para que a atividade crítica, que está prestes a aumentar a sua duração, ainda possa ser executada dentro do tempo, usando os seus recursos num modo de trabalho aumentado. Esta tese analisa esta combinação, as suas consequências e limitações e propõe alguns modelos para gerar e melhorar o cronograma inicial ( baseline) de modo a melhor aproveitar esta abordagem

Large-Scale Agile Frameworks – dealing with interdependences

The market environment and customer requirements are changing at an increasing pace. It is crucial that organizations remain competitive by embracing new challenges. These changes require different and more agile leadership, mindset and collaboration, including more team empowerment. With the constant increment of projects and programs, organizations have to adopt new methods to respond to the demands of the business environment. Large-scale agile approaches are the way. In this research, a literature review about Scaled Agile Framework (SAFe), Large-Scale Agile (LeSS) and Scrum of Scrums (SoS) was conducted, and an analysis of the collected material was made. The primary goal of this research was to understand why large-scale agile methods are used and how do they respond to the interdependences between teams. In this paper, we conclude that SAFe incorporates an enterprise focus similar to LeSS. LeSS is a framework which implicates extinction of roles, processes and artifacts, giving the product a relevant place. SoS is more like a scale-agile process which applied with other large-scale methods can reach its full potential. Having interdependences in mind, several events and processes described in the large-scale agile methods specified in this article are held in order to address these topics