(plan) a rough schedule. When scheduling old jobs, you will  have  expience  and  history  to  follow.  Knowing what  resources  (hardware,  software,  and  personnel) your AIS facility has available will help you see where the peaks (overloading) and valleys (underloading) are in the schedule. It will be your job to take the resources, the time available, the estimated run times, the time jobs must be started and completed, and whatever other information is needed to establish a meaningful and workable schedule with the best job mix possible. You will prioritize and plan. Once you have ironed out all the wrinkles and prepared a smooth schedule, you will submit it up the chain of command for approval. Once approved, you will distribute the schedules to the various functional work areas. THE BENEFITS OF SCHEDULING What are some of the benefits of having a schedule/ scheduling system in place? One answer is PREDICT- ABILITY. A scheduling system makes everyone’s job easier  by  adding  predictability  to  the  AIS  environment. To your superiors, it provides a means of holding down costs through better use of personnel and equipment. Other possible benefits of scheduling areas follows: l l l l l l l l l l l l l l Effective use of all AIS resources; Increased throughput; Decreased turnaround time; User deadlines met; Users made responsible for providing input on schedule; Improved communications with users; Avoidance  of  overloading  and  underuse  of resources; Job delays more readily apparent; Documentation  of  scheduling  deviations  and their causes; Reduced confusion within the AIS facility; Better use of multiprogramming capabilities; AIS facility able to review its own effectiveness; Predictability of the effects of an increased workload; and Predictability  of  future  equipment  and  personnel needs. All of these benefits can be achieved through an effective scheduling system. THE SCHEDULING PROCESS The scheduling process has three moving parts: you, the information, and the method. Let’s look at each. THE SCHEDULER As  scheduler,  you  must  be  well  organized. Scheduling jobs through the various work areas within your AIS facility is much like scheduling the events of your own personal day-to-day life, except it’s a lot more technical and involved. You set aside predetermined amounts  of  time  to  do  certain  things.  Call  it  “a things-to-do list” if you will. It would be nice if your things-to-do list consisted of  nothing  more  than  having  to  accept  incoming requests from the users, finding holes to plug their jobs into the schedule, and waiting for the jobs to show up on the completed list. If that were the case, your things-to-do  list  would  be  relatively  small  and seemingly  uncomplicated.  If  your  AIS  facility  has  such an abundance of resources that any demands made by the users can be easily met, then your facility is probably wasting resources and incurring more expenses than it should. This is probably not the case. To the contrary, your  command  will  probably  have  just  enough resources or too few. As scheduler, you must decide which jobs to process first, second, third, and so on. Which jobs can be run together? You need to determine the job mix. How big are the jobs in terms of memory use? What resources do they use-disk drives, tape drives, printer, and so on? How long will each job run? In what environment must each job be run? Under ideal conditions, you can work through your things-to-do list in a relatively short period of time and come up with a workable schedule. In reality, however, things do not necessarily go according to plan or, rather, according to schedule. Equipment, other people, and outside influences are all problem areas. A lack of productivity and missed deadlines can be caused by unexpected problems, such as: o l * @ Late submission of input from the user; Waiting for data entry to complete a job step; Having to locate a missing file in the library; Job stream parameters entered into the system incorrectly. 1-13