Portfolio scheduling: an integrative approach of limited resources and project prioritization

Abstract

The main issue for portfolio managers is to find a feasible schedule that guarantees the availability of the resources required by the activities at the dates they are scheduled, which is the classical objective of the Resource-Constrained Multi-Project Scheduling Problem (RCMPSP). This paper goes one step further and presents an algorithm that solves the RCMPSP where each project has a different priority for the organization. With this information, the algorithm uses a market-based mechanism to determine what activities should receive preferential treatment during the scheduling process. Therefore, among the multiple possible schedules that comply with the resource constraints (i.e. the solution provided by classical approaches to RCMPSP), our approach allows obtaining a schedule for the portfolio in which, beyond minimizing the duration of the portfolio, the activities are scheduled considering the portfolio manager’s priorities.