Question

In an interview, you were asked to prepare a short essay to elaborate the integration process in handling limited resources in engineering project. It requires you to reflect yourself in the Project Manager roles. (Word limit : 700 to 800 )

Answer 1

Resources are people, equipment, place, money, or anything else that you need in order to do all of the activities that you planned for. Every activity in your activity list needs to have resources assigned to it. Before you can assign resources to your project, you need to know their availability. Resource availability includes information about what resources you can use on your project, when they’re available to you, and the conditions of their availability. Don’t forget that some resources, like consultants or training rooms, have to be scheduled in advance, and they might only be available at certain times. You’ll need to know this before you can finish planning your project.

Estimating the Resources

The goal of activity resource estimating is to assign resources to each activity in the activity list. There are five tools and techniques for estimating activity resources.

Expert judgment means bringing in experts who have done this sort of work before and getting their opinions on what resources are needed.

Alternative analysis means considering several different options for how you assign resources. This includes varying the number of resources as well as the kind of resources you use. Many times, there’s more than one way to accomplish an activity and alternative analysis helps decide among the possibilities.

Published estimating data is something that project managers in a lot of industries use to help them figure out how many resources they need. They rely on articles, books, journals, and periodicals that collect, analyze, and publish data from other people’s projects.

Project management software such as Microsoft Project will often have features designed to help project managers estimate resource needs and constraints and find the best combination of assignments for the project.

Bottom-up estimating means breaking down complex activities into pieces and working out the resource assignments for each piece. It is a process of estimating individual activity resource need or cost and then adding these up together to come up with a total estimate. Bottom-up estimating is a very accurate means of estimating, provided the estimates at the schedule activity level are accurate. However, it takes a considerable amount of time to perform bottom-up estimating because every activity must be assessed and estimated accurately to be included in the bottom-up calculation. The smaller and more detailed the activity, the greater the accuracy and cost of this technique.

Estimating Activity Durations

Once you’re done with activity resource estimating, you’ve got everything you need to figure out how long each activity will take. That’s done in a process called activity duration estimating. This is where you look at each activity in the activity list, consider its scope and resources, and estimate how long it will take to perform.

Estimating the duration of an activity means starting with the information you have about that activity and the resources that are assigned to it, and then working with the project team to come up with an estimate. Most of the time you’ll start with a rough estimate and then refine it to make it more accurate. You’ll use these five tools and techniques to create the most accurate estimates:

Expert judgment will come from your project team members who are familiar with the work that has to be done. If you don’t get their opinion, there’s a huge risk that your estimates will be wrong.

Analogous estimating is when you look at similar activities from previous projects and how long they took. This only works if the activities and resources are similar.

Parametric estimating means plugging data about your project into a formula, spreadsheet, database, or computer program that comes up with an estimate. The software or formula that you use for parametric estimating is based on a database of actual durations from past projects.

Three-point estimating is when you come up with three numbers: a realistic estimate that’s most likely to occur, an optimistic one that represents the best-case scenario, and a pessimistic one that represents the worst-case scenario. The final estimate is the weighted average of the three.

Reserve analysis means adding extra time to the schedule (called a contingency reserve or a buffer) to account for extra risk.

Project Schedule and Critical Path

The project schedule should be approved and signed off by stakeholders and functional managers. This ensures they have read the schedule, understand the dates and resource commitments, and will cooperate. You’ll also need to obtain confirmation that resources will be available as outlined in the schedule. The schedule cannot be finalized until you receive approval and commitment for the resource assignments outlined in it. Once the schedule is approved, it will become your baseline for the remainder of the project. Project progress and task completion will be monitored and tracked against the project schedule to determine if the project is on course as planned.

The schedule can be displayed in a variety of ways, some of which are variations of what you have already seen. Project schedule network diagrams will work as schedule diagrams when you add the start and finish dates to each activity. These diagrams usually show the activity dependencies and critical path.

The critical path method is an important tool for keeping your projects on track. Every network diagram has something that is called the critical path. It’s the string of activities that, if you add up all of the durations, is longer than any other path through the network. It usually starts with the first activity in the network and usually ends with the last one.

Four dimensions of integration in handling limited resources in engineering project:

1. Strength of integration:it is the level or extent to which integrative activities are carried out within the three domains of internal, supplier, and customer integration. It is found that the strength of linkages depends on the extent of information integration, operational integration, and relational integration, of which the two first involve activities and the third involves attitudes. Information integration refers to coordination of information transfer, communication, and supporting technology. Operational integration refers to coordinated decision making and joint work processes and development activities, and relational integration refers to a strategic connection among partners based on trust, commitment, and long-term orientation.

2. Scope of integration: the scope dimension involves internal and external integration, which emphasize the distinction of integrative activities and technologies for different types of actors (i.e. internal functions, customers, and suppliers). Internal integration recognizes that departments and functional roles (e.g. marketing, purchasing, and R&D) within the focal company should function as parts of an integrated process to speed up decisions and to increase collaboration . External integration instead recognizes the importance of strengthening the linkages with other companies by establishing close, interactive relationships with customers and suppliers.

3. Duration of integration: Long-term supplier integration is widely utilized in many industries instead of short-term arm׳s length relationships. In many studies longer integration duration is found to strengthen the integration, both because the partners get to know each other and build mutual trust and because “the shadow of the future” spurs collaboration rather than opportunism. In engineering projects, however, low frequency and the separation of projects into different stages, which mostly are executed by different actors, make the duration dimension especially critical.

4. Depth of integration: In the context of engineering projects, top management commitment is critical for integration and many partnering arrangements mainly involve high managerial levels. However, others suggest that close interaction among personnel at lower hierarchical levels (e.g. purchasers and engineers) strengthens collaboration by increasing behavioral transparency and reducing information asymmetry.