Been a bit quiet lately, due to a recent vacation. In fact, my previous 3 posts were queued up prior to my departure, as my colleague Adrian correctly deduced.
Anyway, I was chatting with my manager the other day when he made an analogy which was so obvious I was amazed I’d not come across it before. He compared the process of project scheduling with the game of Tetris: the different columns represent resources, and the rows are units of time. Blocks are tasks and the passing of time equates to, well, the passing of time.
The objective is the same in both cases: to optimize resource usage while completing as many tasks as possible. I guess the end of the game occurs when you get fired for failing to complete any tasks…
FWIW, Tetris is one of the few computer games I’ve ever got really hooked on, the others being Lemmings, Doom and Transport Tycoon.