Lagged manpower relationships in development projects

Given several important assumptions, this paper suggests that the time phasing of the various skills utilized on a development project result in reasonably stable manpower relationships. The author establishes guidelines intended to sharpen, not replace, management's forecasts of its manpower needs throughout the life of a development program. For the study, he selects five development programs from a single aerospace firm. He discusses the relationships that exist between manpower from the firm's engineering operation and two other operations “downstream” in the development sequence: 1) manufacturing, and 2) quality control and testing. Using simple correlation analysis, the author explores both the time lags present in the application of manpower from the three operations to a development program and the comparative manpower requirements among the operations for given time lags.