The Impact of Good and Bad Multitasking on Buffer Requirements of CCPM Portfolios

Authors

  • Mahdi Ghaffari University of Manchester United Kingdom
  • Margaret W Emsley University of Manchester United Kingdom

Keywords:

Critical Chain, Goldratt, Project Scheduling, Project Management, Buffer sizing, Portfolio Resource Capacity, Multitasking

Abstract

In project planning, it is presumed that resources will be available to pick up their allocated tasks as planned while what happens in reality is rarely this simple. This discrepancy between planning and reality intensifies in Critical Chain Project Management (CCPM) portfolios where no level of multitasking is allowed. Regarding this, Ghaffari and Emsley (2016) determined the boundary between good and bad multitasking in CCPM portfolios with various resource capacities that showed some limited levels of multitasking could be beneficial to alleviate resource availability issues in such environments. In this paper, the authors aim to investigate how good and bad multitasking affect buffer requirements of CCPM portfolios with the same resource capacities considered in the above study. In a deductive approach, a hypothesis is developed and tested through experiments of ten portfolios with similar size and complexity levels, each one containing four projects with a different resource capacity, and comparing the results to their simulated counterparts obtained by the mentioned study. The results show that buffer requirements of portfolios with resource capacity of 130% and lower can be reduced through allowance of higher levels of multitasking. As a major contribution, a framework for buffer requirements of CCPM portfolios with different levels of multitasking and resource capacity is recommended.

Author Biographies

  • Mahdi Ghaffari, University of Manchester United Kingdom

    Mahdi Ghaffari is a PhD candidate at The University of Manchester undertaking his research on resource availability issues in Critical Chain Multi-Project Management and their effects on sizes of buffers in such environments. He has achieved a Bachelors degree (BSc) in Industrial Engineering and Master of Science in Management of Projects. His experience includes working as a project manager of maintenance projects for about three years. He is also certified as PRINCE2 Practitioner by OGC based in the UK and PMP by PMI based in the USA.

  • Margaret W Emsley, University of Manchester United Kingdom

    Dr. Margaret Emsley is a civil and structural engineer who joined what was then UMIST in 1986, and she is now a Reader in the School of Mechanical, Aerospace and Civil Engineering in The University of Manchester. Previously she had carried out research at Loughborough University and worked as an engineer for Tarmac Construction. She was involved in setting up the MSc in Construction Project Management in 1987 and has contributed to the teaching of many courses at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. She has supervised 13 PhD students and over 150 MSc students and has 7 current PhD students. She is currently the Programme Director of the MSc Management of Projects Group of Programmes (which also includes Commercial Project Management, Construction Project Management and Engineering Project Management).

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Published

2022-05-20

Issue

Vol. 4 No. 2 (2016): The Journal of Modern Project Management

Section

Articles-JMPM

License

Copyright (c) 2022 Mahdi Ghaffari, Margaret W Emsley

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

How to Cite

The Impact of Good and Bad Multitasking on Buffer Requirements of CCPM Portfolios. (2022). The Journal of Modern Project Management, 4(2). https://journalmodernpm.com/manuscript/index.php/jmpm/article/view/235

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