Scenario Based Project Management: Impact of Resource Unreliability and Non-availability on Project Delays

Abstract

Conventional project management approaches which focus more on: the activities that the project comprises of; estimates of

the duration of each specific task or activity and hence its scheduled start and completion dates; and in turn on the critical path activities

that must be completed exactly as scheduled to avoid overall project delays, have tended to ignore questions relating to risk management

and the role and value of information in various scenarios that might be obtained. Dynamic modeling and analytical approaches based

on system dynamics and fuzzy sets and analysis, for instance, have been offered to counter the possibility of slippages or failures

along the time, cost and performance dimensions, and to enable managers to more systematically and comprehensively manage project

risks. We seek to focus on the impact of resource unreliability and non-availability on project delays and cost overruns in our efforts

to offer a new modeling and analytical framework, which combines conventional project management with scenario analysis, system

dynamics and simulation to better analyze the time vs. information vs. cost trade-offs and the benefits in terms of risk reduction as

well as increased RoI, etc. We believe that this system dynamics-scenario analysis combination would prove to be a more suitable and

valuable tool for such analytics because it would enable the manager to:

–better analyze and understand the various cost, schedule and effort-related dimensions of the project, and especially the resource

unreliability and non-availability one,

–more accurately and reliably forecast the future results,

–and “test drive” and evaluate several alternative solutions to any problem or combinations of problems that might be obtained in a

“flight-simulator” sort of setting, in a manner of speaking.