Resource skills automatic replacement in CPM resource leveling.

1. Skills:
Spider Project includes skill scheduling capability that can
automatically assign resources that have necessary skills based
on their availability.
To do this it is necessary to define what resources have certain
skills. Any resource might have different skills and be better at
same skill than other resources. It is also useful to be able to
assign skills to teams [multi-resources].
Skills are usually assigned when it
is not clear what resources will be
available at the moment when
activity become ready for
execution.
1

2. Multi Resources:
It is convenient to define resource crews (multi-resources)
and then assign them to project activities as if a single
resource. Each crew consists of certain resources and
assigning crew we assign all of them.
2

3. All resources within a skill can perform any of the activities but
resources might have different production rates.
The duration of the
activities will be
adjusted with
selected skill-
resource production
rate.
3

4. Multi Resources are convenient when 1 resource with higher
productivity can replace 2 resources.

5. Quantities & Workloads
When your resources share the same skill it is not a good idea
to fix them to specific activities.
Say you have under same skill Peter, Bill and Victor on fixed
duration activities and you fix the resources as shown in the
next figure.
If Activity 2 is delayed then Activity 1 will be delayed. On the
other hand automatic skills replacement will assign Bill or
Peter to Activity 1 according to availability and specified
priorities avoiding an unnecessary schedule delay.

6. Quantities & Workloads
Fixing named resources make sense when there are no other
resources with the same skill in your pool.
Schedules are not written in stone, they change and so the
availability of resources. It is easier and better to use
automatic skill replacement when you have many resources
sharing the same skill.
Be reminded that Skill replacement becomes harder when
resources have different productivities, this is where
automatic skill replacement considering productivities
shines.
So easy!