Resource-Constrained Scheduling

Correct Answer: Fast tracking overlapping activities that require fewer resources, while ensuring quality checks.

The best approach in this resource-constrained scenario is to fast track overlapping activities that require fewer resources, while ensuring quality checks. By identifying activities that can be performed concurrently and assigning them to the available resources, the project can maintain its momentum despite the reduced workforce. This strategy allows for efficient utilization of the remaining team members and minimizes the impact on the project timeline. However, it is crucial to prioritize quality checks and maintain open communication among team members to ensure that the work being fast-tracked meets the required standards. Extending the project timeline would result in significant delays and may not be acceptable to stakeholders who are already anxious about the project's progress. Outsourcing a portion of the work to a less specialized team may compromise the quality of the project and could lead to additional challenges in coordination and integration. Applying resource smoothing techniques may help distribute the workload evenly, but it does not address the immediate need for specialized skills that were lost with the departure of the structural engineering team.

Correct Answer: Prioritize tasks based on their criticality to project completion, reallocating key skilled resources to work on the integration as their primary task.

The best course of action is to prioritize tasks based on their criticality to project completion and reallocate key skilled resources to work on the integration as their primary task. This approach ensures that the most critical bottleneck is addressed first, minimizing the overall project delay. Extending the project timeline should be avoided if possible, as it may have negative consequences such as increased costs and missed market opportunities. Hiring external consultants can be costly and time-consuming, especially given the limited time remaining in the project. Crash scheduling by adding more resources to less critical earlier phases may not directly address the integration bottleneck and could lead to additional coordination overhead. By prioritizing the integration task and assigning the key skilled resources to focus on it, the project team can concentrate their efforts on the most critical path to project completion, increasing the likelihood of meeting the launch date.

Correct Answer: Reassign the task to other team members who might have a similar skill set, even if not as proficient

In situation of limited resources with a team member falling sick, the optimal approach would be to reassign the task to other team members who might have a similar skill set, even if not as proficient. This is because the project still has to meet its timeline and objectives. Consequently, it's important to leverage the remaining team resources most efficiently. The option of hiring a new resource isn't ideal because it not only involves cost, but it might also take time to onboard and train the new resource to the required level of proficiency. This can delay the project significantly Waiting for the resource to recover is not a reliable solution. The recovery period might be uncertain and could obstruct progress on the project Canceling the task completely might lead to non-completion of the project or failing to meet its objectives, which is the least desirable outcome.