time

Minimizing the total duration of a resource-constrained project is often a generally accepted project scheduling objective (see “What is my scheduling objective? Minimizing the project lead time”). However, optimizing a scheduling objective within the presence of limited renewable resources often requires software algorithms. In this article, three lower bound calculations will be discussed, as follows: 

Resource-constrained project scheduling involves the construction of an activity timetable, i.e. the determination of a start and finish time for each project activity, respecting the precedence relations and the limited availability of the renewable resources, while optimizing a predefined scheduling objective (see “Resource constrained project scheduling: What is my scheduling objective?”). In this article, the scheduling objective is assumed to be the minimization of the total duration (or lead time) of the project, which often is a standard scheduling objective option in commercial software tools.