Project and Quality Management Term Project

Use the network diagram below and the additional information provided to answer the corresponding questions. [15 points]

You might think about creating a list for this part of the project beginning with the first step – so the reader gets a clear idea of the sequence of the steps you will take to complete the research and data gathering needed for your project.

YOU CANNOT START AND/OR COMPLETE THIS WITHOUT A FINAL SALES FORECAST AND A LIST OF ALL YOUR OPERATIONAL COSTS

(b) Which activities should be crashed to meet a project deadline of 12 days at minimum cost?

A flow chart in this step of the process should be utilized as well in order to aid in the visualization of the ideal behaviors. This process may also

1.2 Describe the components of a plan which manages the team’s use of resources to achieve the teams objectives...........................................................................................................................7

Define five (5) major tasks, each with one to two (1-2) subtasks. Also write a brief description for each task.

You need to review existing policy and procedure documents (in the appendices of your Student Workbook) and develop guidelines for managing the process of gathering research information. You also need to identify and plan to acquire all resources necessary for supporting the project.

1.2 Identify the tasks and resources required for the activity, including any operational constraints that apply

Problem 12 (page 82) Table 2.5 on page 82 contains information about an environmental clean-up project. Shorten the project three weeks by finding the minimum-cost schedule. Assume that project indirect costs and penalty consts are negligible. Identify activities to crash while minimizing the additional crash costs. Solution: AON Diagram for the environmental project:

5) Show all work, as partial credit will be given for each question’s answer. Organize your work so it is easy to follow. You can use word, power point, excel or combinations of the above.

Analyzing crash times and costs we see that if each activity were crashed the project could be finished in 42 weeks, however, the budget would skyrocket to $4.952 million. Therefore, the team will need to analyze the project network and its critical path to determine which individual activities can be crashed while maintaining the integrity of the budget and the duration of the project.

In field of project management, there are a plethora of mechanisms under perpetual reevaluation. One specific segmentation of project management under such scrutiny pertains to cost duration, which is the time and monetary costs of completing individual tasks within the project’s critical path (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). The process of monitoring and evaluating the time and financial impacts of each task is referred to as cost duration analysis (IBM Knowledge Center, 2016). A chief concern of cost duration analysis is identifying tasks within the project’s critical path which can reduce project duration (PMI, 2013). A common approach to reducing a project’s duration is task “crashing” (PMI, p.181). According to The Project Management Institute (2013) crashing refers to the process of methodical determining the financial value of increasing a critical path task’s resources in order to decrease project duration (p.181).

Placing the events in a Gantt chart will help clarify and organize the events, the order in which they will occur, as well as any preceding activities that must be accomplished. Table 5 shows the project 's normal conditions, their timeframes and associated costs. As noted, normal conditions require 50 weeks to complete and therefore, cannot be used. Table 6 is a similar chart showing the project under ultimate crash conditions. As mentioned earlier, the project can be accomplished in as little as 42 weeks if every activity is crashed. This scenario is not desired however, because the project 's budget then approaches $5 million in associated costs, over 50% beyond the original allotted expenditure.

From Figure 1, we know that the critical path is Activity 1-2-5-7-10-13-15. It is because if there is any change of time in the Activities on the critical path, the whole progress time of the project will change. Therefore, we choose to crash the activities on the critical path with the lowest crash cost in order to lower the time used with minimum additional cost. Activity 7 has the lowest crash cost within the Activities on the critical path. So, we choose to crash Activity 7 first.