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Lab 21 — Resource Allocation Conflicts

At a glance

Learning objectives

By the end of this lab you should be able to:

  1. Detect over-allocation from an assignment grid, including the part-time case.
  2. Resolve over-allocation with smoothing first, leveling second, and substitution third — and state what each costs.
  3. Quantify the effect of a resolution on the project's end date.
  4. Identify key-person dependency and design a transfer that does not cost the critical path.

Scenario

This lab continues the Hospital Appointment and Patient Portal from Labs 05 and 11. The project is in week 3 of a 20-week schedule and is on the critical path at the integration milestone.

The team, with agreed availability:

Person Role Availability Notes
Aisha Business analyst 100% Runs requirements workshops and UAT support
Bilal Developer 100% Portal front end
Chen Developer 100% Integration with the patient-record system
Dania Tester 100% Test design and execution; also supports UAT
Omar Database administrator 50% Also committed to a data-warehouse migration

Assignment plan, in person-days per week (capacity is 5 days per full-time person, 2.5 for Omar):

Week Aisha Bilal Chen Dania Omar
1 5 5 3 2 2
2 5 5 5 3 0
3 7 5 5 3 2
4 5 4 4 5 2

Known activity facts:

Activity Owner Week Float Notes
Requirements specification Aisha 3 and 4 0 days On the critical path
UAT support preparation Aisha 3 2 days Finishes before UAT begins
Portal front-end build Bilal 1–4 1 day
Patient-record integration Chen 1–4 0 days On the critical path; needs Omar for schema work
Test design Dania 2–4 3 days
Schema and migration work Omar 3 and 4 1 day Requires database skills

Additional facts:

  • Omar is committed to the data-warehouse migration for 1 day in week 3 and 1 day in week 4. Those commitments are contractual and cannot be moved.
  • Dania has test design skills and has previously supported UAT on another system.
  • Substituting a developer for Aisha on the integration specification is not possible: the work is requirements work, not code.
  • The project's end date is fixed by a hospital board decision, so extending it is not acceptable without escalation.
  • A second database administrator exists in the organisation but is contracted at a higher rate for external projects and is unlikely to be released.

Your role

You are the project manager. The steering committee has asked you to confirm the plan is deliverable without changing the end date. Your job is to find and resolve the conflicts — and to be honest about anything that cannot be resolved.

Project information and assumptions

The scenario is part of the example-project library — read the full description there if you want the wider context.

  • Capacity is 5 person-days per week per full-time person, 2.5 for Omar.
  • Over-allocation means assigned days exceed available days for that person in that week.
  • Professional judgement: a person cannot do 6 days of work in a 5-day week, and planning them at 6 does not create a sixth day.
  • Treat any claim that a part-time person has spare capacity as something to verify, not assume.

Tasks

Task 1 — Find every over-allocation

Build a variance table: assigned − capacity for each person in each week. Highlight every positive value.

Then state:

  1. How many over-allocations there are, and who they affect.
  2. Which over-allocation is largest, in days.
  3. Which over-allocations you had to think about twice, and why (consider Omar's part-time status and the contractual commitment).

Task 2 — Check the part-time arithmetic

Omar is at 50%, which is 2.5 days per week. He is also committed to the data-warehouse migration for one day in weeks 3 and 4.

  1. State Omar's effective capacity in weeks 3 and 4.
  2. State his over-allocation in each of those weeks, in days.
  3. Explain in two sentences why recording Omar as "50% available" and then planning him for 2 days a week would produce a hidden over-allocation rather than an error anyone notices.

Task 3 — Resolve by smoothing

Smoothing means moving work within its float, so the end date is unaffected.

For each over-allocation, decide whether smoothing can resolve it, and if so:

  1. State which activity's work moves.
  2. State how much float it consumes and how much remains.
  3. State what the resolution costs, if anything.

Note explicitly that one activity has zero float and therefore cannot be smoothed.

Task 4 — Resolve the rest by substitution

At least one over-allocation cannot be resolved by smoothing alone. Use substitution:

  1. State which work you move, to whom, and why that person is a credible substitute.
  2. State the cost of the substitution — including any handover time and any ramp-up risk.
  3. State what you would do to verify the substitute can do the work before it is needed, and when.
  4. Name the substitution you rejected, and why it was not viable.

Task 5 — Compare with leveling

Suppose the fixed end date were relaxed. Resolve the same conflicts by leveling — extending the schedule so nobody is over-allocated.

  1. State the new end date in weeks, and the extension in days and as a percentage of the 20-week plan.
  2. Identify which activity causes the extension and why.
  3. State what leveling would cost in money, using PKR 22,000 per person-day for the resources held.
  4. Write two sentences explaining why leveling is often the correct choice, and two sentences explaining what makes it wrong on this project.

Task 6 — Address the key-person risk

Omar is involved in integration work that is on the critical path, at 50% availability, in weeks 3 and 4.

  1. Write the risk in cause–event–impact form, with a probability and an impact in days.
  2. Design a knowledge transfer from Omar to a named internal person, stating what is transferred, how, and by when.
  3. State the cost of the transfer in person-days and in schedule terms.
  4. Identify the secondary risk the transfer creates, and how you would manage it.
  5. State whether the transfer is worth doing even if Omar never becomes unavailable, and justify your answer.

Task 7 — Test the plan against the fixed end date

Write a short paragraph, for the steering committee, that answers: is the plan deliverable without changing the end date?

Your answer must include:

  1. The number of over-allocations found and resolved.
  2. The technique used for each, and the cost.
  3. The one thing that remains unmitigated and what you are doing about it.
  4. What you need from the committee, if anything.

Deliverable

  1. The variance table and the three answers from Task 1.
  2. The part-time arithmetic for Omar.
  3. The smoothing resolutions with float consumed.
  4. The substitution with its cost and verification approach.
  5. The leveling comparison with extension, cost, and the two arguments.
  6. The key-person risk in three-part form with the transfer design.
  7. The committee paragraph.

Hints and guidance

  • Smoothing before leveling. Smoothing protects the end date; leveling does not. Try smoothing for everything that can take it before you propose to move the date.
  • Zero float is zero. Aisha's requirements specification cannot move at all without moving the end date — which is why substitution, not smoothing, is the answer for it.
  • Substitution has a cost, and it is usually handover time. State it; it is often a fraction of a day, and it is always non-zero.
  • A part-time resource is not a fractional person. Omar's 50% plus a contractual commitment leaves 1.5 days, and the plan must show 1.5.
  • Key-person risk is worth transferring even if nothing goes wrong, because the transfer also improves the schedule's resilience to ordinary illness.

Self-check criteria

Check How to verify it
Every over-allocation found Aisha week 3 (2 days) and Omar weeks 3 and 4 (0.5 day each)
Part-time capacity applied correctly Omar's effective capacity is 1.5 days in weeks 3 and 4
Zero-float activity identified correctly Requirements specification cannot be smoothed
Smoothing resolutions state float consumed UAT support preparation consumes 2 of its 2 days
Substitution cost stated Handover time quantified, not ignored
Leveling extension calculated End date extension in days and as a percentage
Key-person risk is in three-part form Cause, event, and impact all present, with a number
Transfer has a recipient and a date Named role and a by-when
Committee paragraph is decision-oriented It states what is needed, not just what happened

Reflection

  1. The largest over-allocation was two days, yet it is on the critical path. What does that combination mean for how you monitor it?
  2. Substitution moves work to Dania, who is currently at 3 of 5 days in week 3 and 5 of 5 in week 4. Did your resolution create a new conflict? If so, you have found the real structure of the problem.
  3. Leveling would cost schedule and money. What would have to be true about the hospital board's decision for you to ask for a leveling extension instead?
  4. Omar's 50% is a resource allocation, but it also makes him a single point of failure. Should the project have refused the 50% allocation at the outset? Argue both sides.
Check your resolution

Over-allocations found

Person Week Assigned Capacity Over by
Aisha 3 7 5 2.0
Omar 3 2 1.5 0.5
Omar 4 2 1.5 0.5

Omar's effective capacity: 2.5 nominal − 1.0 contractual = 1.5 days in both weeks.

Smoothing and substitution

  • Aisha, week 3: the requirements specification has zero float and cannot move. UAT support preparation has 2 days of float, so 2 days of Aisha's week-3 load can be delegated to Dania (who has 2 spare days in week 3), at a handover cost of roughly 0.5 person-day. Alternative: move the UAT preparation 2 days later, consuming all its float and finishing exactly as UAT begins — no cost, but zero remaining protection.
  • Omar, weeks 3 and 4: 0.5 day in each week must move. Omar has 0 days assigned in week 2, so the cleanest resolution is to pull half a day of schema work forward into week 2, leaving float untouched. If the work cannot be reordered, substitute Chen for the schema portion, accepting a ramp-up cost of about 0.5 person-day.

Total cost of resolution: roughly 1 person-day, with no effect on the end date.

Leveling alternative: the extension is driven by Aisha's zero-float specification work in week 3; leveling delays it by 2 days and shifts the critical path, extending the 20-week plan by 2 days — about 1% — while holding extra resources for those days.

Full working is in the Advanced labs answer key.

Extension challenge

Recalculate the plan with Omar at 25% instead of 50%, and with the data-warehouse commitment unchanged. Then answer: at what availability does the project become undeliverable on the fixed end date, and what is the earliest point in the project at which you could have discovered that number? Present the answer as a one-page note to the sponsor that quantifies the availability threshold and offers two alternatives, each with its cost.