The Effects of Learning, Forgetting, and Relearning on Decision Rule Performance in Multiproject Scheduling

ABSTRACT Product development occurs in multiproject environments where preemption is often allowed so that critical projects can be addressed immediately. Because product development is characterized by time‐based competition, there is pressure to make decisions quickly using heuristics methods that yield fast project completion. Preemption heuristics are needed both to choose activities for preemption and then to determine which resources to use to restart preempted activities. Past research involving preemption has ignored any completion time penalty due to the forgetting experienced by project personnel during preemption and the resulting relearning time required to regain lost proficiency. The purpose of this research is to determine the impact of learning, forgetting, and relearning (LFR) on project completion time when preemption is allowed. We present a model for the LFR cycle in multiproject development environments. We test a number of priority rules for activity scheduling, activity preemption, and resource assignment subsequent to preemption, subject to the existence of the LFR cycle, for which a single type of knowledge worker resource is assigned among multiple projects. The results of the simulation experiments clearly demonstrate that LFR effects are significant. The tests of different scheduling, preemption, and resource reassignment rules show that the choice of rule is crucial in mitigating the completion time penalty effects of the LFR cycle, while maintaining high levels of resource utilization. Specifically, the worst performing rules tested for each performance measure are those that attempt to maintain high resource utilization. The best performing rules are based on activity criticality and resource learning.