A lively discussion is under way at Sunrise Software, where you are a project ma

Question

A lively discussion is under way at Sunrise Software, where you are a project manager. The main question is whether the person-days concept has limitations. In other words, if a task will require 100 person-days, does it matter whether two people in 50 days, five people in 20 days, 10 people in 10 days, or some other combination that adds up to 100 performs the work?

Programmers Paula and Ethan seem to think it does not matter. On the other hand, Hector, a systems analyst, says it is ridiculous to think that any combination would work. To support his point, he offers this extreme example: Could 100 people accomplish a task estimated at 100 person-days in one day?

Is Hector correct? If so, what are the limits in the “people versus days” equation? Taking the concept a step further, is there an optimum number of people to be assigned to a task? If so, how would that number be determined? You need to offer some guidance at the next project team meeting. What will you say?

Explanation / Answer

There is no specific answer to this question, Paula and Ethan are having wrong concerned about the limit as well as the feasibility of combination of people and days. Main problem behind this is specific situation is that these two conditions are not easy to define.. The extreme limits are specifically obvious. For example, take the hundred percentage of two rivers sequence, can one person do a job in 100 days? Maybe or maybe not. Sometimes there are task involved in operation that require more than one person such as operating a crane lifting heavy loads.
Assigning the optimum number of people is the real challenge for project managers. Experience is the only thing which project managers can do to influence and to correctly lead the situation. Managers develop a sense of availability as well as feasibility of application for different options which is their personal trait come with the experience. Having a look at the above specific factors we can see that making constant changes to the project.

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