Multimode resource-constrained project scheduling in flexible projects

Abstract

Flexible agile and extreme project management methods have become increasingly popular among practitioners, particularly in the IT and R&D sectors. In contrast to the theoretically and algorithmically well-established and developed trade-off and multimode methods applied in traditional project management methods, flexible project scheduling methods, which are applied in agile, hybrid, and especially extreme project management, lack a principled foundation and algorithmic handling. The aim of this paper is to fill this gap. We propose a matrix-based method that provides scores for alternative project plans that host flexible task dependencies and undecided, supplementary task completion while also handling the new but unplanned tasks. In addition, traditional multimode resource-constrained project scheduling problems are also covered. The proposed method can bridge the flexible and traditional approaches.

Flexible Project Scheduling Algorithms

“…There are different combinations of agile and traditional project management approaches [11,12,15]. However, there are very few exact algorithms (see, e.g., [7,8]) that can be used to solve hybrid multimode problems that can handle unplanned tasks and dependencies. Nevertheless, R&D and IT projects, such as introducing and setting up new information systems, may require reorganizing part of the project, and R&D projects may require handling unplanned tasks, particularly in the development phase.…”

“…This method extends the traditional multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem by allowing for the restructuring and reorganizing of projects and handling of unplanned new tasks. The proposed hybrid time-cost and hybrid time-quality-cost tradeoff models [8] and multimode methods [7] manage flexible project plans and allow us to restructure or reorganize these project plans to satisfy customer and management claims. In contrast to the traditional project scoring and selection methods, there is no need to specify all project alternatives to select the most desirable project scenario or the one with the shortest duration or lowest cost.…”

“…Based on these properties, exact back and forth algorithms are proposed to find a single project schedule [7] or multilevel project structure [6]. All methods contain 3.…”

“…To support the agile project management approach, the proposed matrix-based methods handle both the priority of the task completions and the flexibility of dependencies between tasks [5,8]. In addition to supporting extreme project management approaches, unplanned tasks can be scheduled [7]. The proposed matrix-based method can also be used to plan traditional, nonflexible projects.…”

“…The proposed matrix-based algorithm is based on the former studies [5][6][7][8]; however, they are unified into the common matrix-based model, and they are extended to handle nonrenewable resources too. The proposed matrix-based model and the scheduling algorithm have the following features.…”