An Experimental Investigation of Resource Allocation in Multiactivity Projects

This paper describes a computer-based experiment in the scheduling of multiactivity projects with limited resources. The main interest lay in a comparison of the traditional sorting criteria used to allot priority to activities competing for resources inadequate to satisfy all the demands and criteria newly defined for this work. One aim was to isolate, if possible, a criterion equally as good as the Critical Path parameters usually employed and yet easier to compute in practice. A similar experiment was carried out by Pascoe but none of the criteria used satisfied the second condition. It was also possible to monitor the effects on the scheduling of network parameters such as shape and connectivity.