BA 341 Final Edition Final Exam Study Guide Lectures 19 23 Lecture 19 November 10 Projects A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product or service Characteristics of a Project o Purpose a one time activity with well defined desired end results o Temporary has a definite beginning and a definite end hence a finite duration o Life Cycle projects evolve in steps from a slow beginning they progress to a build up of size then peak begin a decline and then must be terminated o Interdependencies projects can interact with other projects within the same parent organization and most typically with the functional departments marketing finance manufacturing etc of the firm How are projects organized As part of the functional organization Matrix organization Pure Project o Uniqueness every project has elements that make it unique e g an office building has different owners design location contractors etc o Conflict projects vs functional dept and project vs project with respect to resources and personnel Examples of Projects o Honda introduces Insight o Apple launches iOS 6 o Construction of Haslam Business Building o Columbia Pictures produces The Amazing Spider Man o Pfizer launches Sudafed Project Manager Responsibilities major challenges skills of good PMs Responsible to o The parent organization o The client o The project team Major challenges o Selecting and motivating the personnel o Dealing with obstacles o Making project goal trade offs o Communicating with all parties o Dealing with project risks and potential failure What is takes to be a good project manager o Strong technical and managerial background Credibility o Excellent communication skills o Excellent organizational planning goal setting skills o Negotiator and team builder o Sensitive to political issues o Ability to handle pressure Project Scheduling Common inputs to Project Scheduling o List of project tasks subtasks work packages and activities o Logical sequence of activities in the project o Activity durations o Resources involved and their availability o Usually presented as o Work breakdown structure WBS o Precedence tables Lecture 20 November 12 Project Scheduling Common Outputs o Gantt Charts o Project network diagram o Critical Path Method CPM and PERT o One alternative is to identify all possible paths through the project o Project duration is given by the longest path critical path o Using the Critical Path Method a project management technique that uses only one time factor per activity Identify activity slack and critical path s based on ES EF LS LF times provided with the network diagram o Earliest Start ES earliest time at which an activity can start assuming all predecessors have been completed o Earliest Finish EF Earliest time at which an activity can be finished o Latest Start LS latest time at which an activity can start so as to not delay the completion time of an entire project o Latest Finish LF latest time by which an activity has to finish so as to not delay the completion time of the entire project o Slack time free time for an activity also referred to as free float or free slack Slack LS Es LF EF o On the test be able to Identify impact of activity delays on project schedule o Compute expected activity durations and variances Program Evaluation and Review Technique PERT o Similar to CPM but able to incorporate duration uncertainty o A project management technique that employs three times estimates for each activity o Let for each project task a optimistic time estimate b pessimistic time estimate m most likely time estimate o Then compute for each project task ET Expected Time a 4m b 6 2 Variance b a 6 2 Lecture 21 November 17 Project Scheduling Compute project completion probabilities be able to read the normal table provided with the class notes Time cost models in Project Management Goal reduce project duration by x days Constraint find the most cost effective approach Steps o 1 Determine the project inputs List of project activities and activity sequence Activity durations and costs Normal Cost NC the lowest expected activity cost Normal Time NT duration associated with NC Crash Time CT the shortest possible activity time Crash Cost CC the cost associated with CT o 2 Find the cost per period slope to expedite each activity o 3 Identify the critical path using normal activity times o 4 Start crashing reducing the activities on the critical path one activity at a time one period e g day at a time in increasing order of their slopes the lower the slope the cheaper the crashing o 5 Reevaluate the critical path after each one period crash if new duration is satisfactory stop otherwise go back to step 4 Lecture 22 November 19 Critical Chain Project Management Typical traditional assumptions behavioral aspects o There are several human behavior laws that tend to jeopardize task and overall project durations o Parkinson s Law o 3 Minute Egg Rule o Student Syndrome o Multitasking o Addressing them is especially important when there are limited recourses available for a project Let s consider an example Assume the following project where the letters represent resources Further assume that activity durations have been determined in the traditional way i e have been individually padded for safety In this example letters represent recourses o There is one task that requires the resource V o There is one task that requires the resource W o There is one task that requires the resource Y o There is one task that requires the resource Z o And there are two tasks that require the resource X The resource X can work only on 1 task at a time Step 1 Use Aggressive but possible times ABPT o According to the CCPM the first step is to use aggressive but possible times ABPT for task durations o Aggressive but possible times equal to half of traditionally estimated task durations For example the traditional time estimate for the task that requires the resource V was 12 days ABPT estimate is 12 2 6 days Step 2 Identify the critical chain The longest sequence of dependent events that prevents the project from completing sooner based on ABPT durations o The correspondent of the constraint in a project environment o Task and resource dependencies are key in identifying the critical chain o o This diagram shows the rearrangement of the tasks Now we do not have any resource conflict We find the project duration by finding the longest path It s Y X X Z And it s duration is 8 10 10 12 40 days o