Assignment2,Chapter11, Exercise 4

Chapter11, Exercise 4
Suppose your organization is deciding which of four projects to bid on. Information on each is in the table below. Assume that all up-front investments are no to be recovered, so they are shown as a negative profits. Write a few paragraph on which projects you will bid on. Be sure to use the EMV information and your personal risk tolerance to justify your answer.

Answer:
In a course of Bidding, there may be different projects in hand, all the project looks same. It is very difficult to identify the best project to bid. There are certain calculations, whose result can help to identify the best project. Process includes Quantitative risk analysis like decision tree and expected monetary value (EMV). EMV is a product of risk event probability and the risk event's monetary value.

Project 1's EMV= $60000-$25000= $35000

Project 2's EMV=$30000+$20000-$18000= $32000

Project 3's EMV=$14000-$1500= $12500

Project 4's EMV= $12000+$9000+$4000-$10000= $15000

Since the Project 1 has the greatest value of EMV which is equals to $35000, therefore Project 1 the best. It is beneficial for the organization to bid in the Project 1.

Assignment2,Chapter12 Exercise 3

Chapter 12Exercise 3

Suppose your company is trying to decide whether it should buy special equipment to prepare some of its high quality publications itself or lease the equipment from another company. Suppose leasing the equipment cost $240 per day. If you decide to purchase the equipment, the initial investment is $6800 ,and operations will cost $70 per day. After how many days will the lease cost be the same as the purchase cost for the equipment? Assume your company would only use this equipment for 30 days. Should your company buy the equipment or lease it?
Ans :

Calculation for leasing the equipments,
Cost Per day=$ 240
Number of days to use equipments= 30
Therefore the total cost of leasing the equipment= 30* $240
=$7200


Calculation for buying decision,

Initial investment=$6800
operation cost per day=$70
Number of days to use equipments= 30
Total Operation Cost for the project=$70*30
=$2100
Therefore the total cost for the project if the equipment is purchased is=$6800+$2100
=$8900

Leasing cost and purchase cost becomes almost equal in= $8900/$240 days
=37.08 days
approx=37 days

From the calculations done, according to the above scenario for the company, it can be clearly noticed that the company is able to save its cost, if it decides to lease the equipment from the other company for the high quality publications. As the cost for it is only $7200.
But in case of the purchase of the equipment it has to spend $8900 to carry out the same project for 30 days. If this amount is utilized for leasing the equipment then the company has the opportunity to use that equipment for about 37 days and can add more profit.

Assignment2, Chapter10, Excercise3

Chapter 10, Exercise 3

How Many Different communication channels does a project team with six people have?How many more communications channels would there be if the team grew to ten people.?

Ans:
Communication channel is a very important part of the project. If the communication channel is good then automatically the flow of information is also good. Flow of information become complex with the increasing number of people. The complexity increases because the number of communication channel increases with the number of people. Number of communication channels can be calculated with respect to the number of people.

The formula Says,
Number of communications channels = n(n-1)/2

Where n is the number of People involved.
Here given,
number of people n = 6
Now,
According to the formula,
Number Of Communication channels= 6(6-1)/2
=(6*5)/2
=30/2
=15
therefore the project team with 6 members have 15 communication channels.
If the number of the people in a project team increases from 6 to 10 then, n =10,
According to the formula,
Number of communication channel=10(10-1)/2
=(10*9)/2
=90/2
=45
If the team grew to ten people then there will be 45 communication channels.

Assignment2 Chapter9 Excercise1

Chapter9 Excercise1
Your company is planning to launch an important new project starting January 1, which will last one year. Your estimate that you will need one full-time project manager, two fulltime business analysts for the first six months, two full-time senior programmers for the whole year, four full-time junior programmers for the months of July, August, and September, and one full-time technical writer for the last three months. Use Microsoft Excel to create a stacked column chart showing a resource histogram for this project, similar to the one shown in Figure 9-6. Be sure to include a legend to label the types of resources needed. Use appropriate titles and axis labels.

Assignment2, Chapter 8, Exercise 2

Chapter 8, Exercise 2

Create a Pareto Diagram based on the information in the table below। First, create a spreadsheet in the Excel, using the data in the table below। List the most frequent customer problem first। Add a column called “% of Total” and another one called “cumulative %”। Then enter formulas to calculate those items। Next, use the Excel Chart Wizard to create a Pareto diagram based on this data। Use the line-Column on 2 Axis custom type chart so your resulting chart looks similar to the one in figure 8-1.

Ans:According to the given information,Pareto Diagram is constructed. A table with a % of Total and cumulative % column is also included. Pareto Diagram is a way to identify the quality problem in the system. It is also sometimes reffered as 80-20 rule, that means 80% of the problem is due to the 20% of the causes. This pareto diagram will help to identify and priotize the problems

Chapter6,Question2.

Chapter6
Question2. Consider table 6.3network diagram data for a small project. All duration estimates or estimated times are in days; and the network proceeds from node 1 to node 9.

) Draw an AOA network diagram representing the project .Put the node numbers in the circles and draw arrows from node to node, labeling each arrow with the activity letter and estimated time.
b)Identify all the paths in the network diagram and note how long they are, using figure 6-8 as a guide for how to represent each path.
c) What is the critical path for this project and how long is it?
d) What is the shortest possible time that it will take to complete this project?
e) Review the online tutorials for Gantt and PERT charts in the third suggested Reading by Mark Kelly in this chapter . Write one page paper with your answers to the questions in the tutorials. Also include any questions you had in the tutorials.







b) Path 1: A-B-E-H-K length=2+2+2+2+2=10 Days
Path 2: A-C-F-H-K length=2+3+3+2+2=12 Days
Path 3: A-C-F-I-J-K length=2+3+3+5+1+2=16 Days
Path 4: A-D-G-J-K length=2+4+6+1+2=15 Days
c) The critical path of the project is A-C-F-I-J-K because it is the longest path through the network.
d) The shortest possible time needed to complete this project is 16 Days
e)
Gantt chart tutorials
1) What is the first milestone in this project?
Ans: the first milestone in the project is “sign contract”. That is in the first day of the project that is on 30th November 2000.
2) How much 'slack' time is there after commencement of the alterations, including weekends?
Ans: the commencement date of alteration is 11th December 2000, and the activity is “Prepare site”. As the definition explains that the slack time is the expanded time scale, Therefore if task 11 is extended to 5 days more, the working days is still 3 days expanded because there is Saturday and Sunday also in those extended days. The length of the critical path for the project (8, 9, 11, 12) is 7days (1+2+3+1) excluding weekends. The alternate path for the project can be 8, 9, 10, and 12 since task 10 & 11 overlaps. Thus the alternate path takes 6 days (1+2+2+1). The only difference is of 1 day. But this demonstrates that if task 10 is really very difficult and time consuming then the slack time of 3 days can be added including weekends. They can also work in the weekends to complete the project in time.
3) The supplier of the cable has just informed you that the cable delivered to you is faulty and the replacement cable will not arrive until the end of Monday 18 December. What impact will this have on the end date?
Ans : If such things happen in the project then it will surely have an effect on the finishing date of the project. The ending date will be definitely shift a bit. Here as the delivery of cable will be in 18th December, then only the cabling can be started. Thus cabling will be started on 19th of December shifting the end date of the project to 22nd December.
\4)What options would a project manager have if the cable was arriving on 21 December and the due date still had to be met?
Ans: If such situation is faced then the things that can be done are:
Work day and night for 24 hours,
Bring more workers,
Reduce the task
Improve work efficiency.
PERT Practice
1) Which tasks are on the critical path of the PERT chart above?
Ans: the critical path for the PERT chart is A, B, D, F, I because it is the longest path in chart which takes about 14 days.
2) What is the slack time for tasks C, D and G?
The slack time for task C is one day. Since C & E takes 5 days to complete the task from starting node to the ending node whereas D& F takes 6 days to complete the task from starting node to ending node. Therefore, either task C or task E could take one extra day to finish without disturbing the task that after the starting node of C.
For D there is no slack time because it is in the critical path.
For G, path B, C, E=3+1+4=8
Path 2: B-D-F=3+3+3=9
Path 3: G+H=2+5=7
Therefore the slack time for G is 9-7=2 days.
3) The person working on task C tells the project manager he can't start work until one day after the scheduled starting date. What impact would this have on the completion date of the project?
Ans: if the task E is delayed be 1 day it could have a great impact on the project because other task are also dependent on this task. But regarding the situation of this project, there is a 1 day slack time for task C, thus C can use its slack time and it will have no impact on the project.
4: Task A will be delayed by 2 days because some equipment has arrived late. If the project manager still wants to finish the project within the original time frame, he will need to shorten the time for one or more of the tasks. What steps can he take to reduce the number of days allocated to a task?
It is a common sense question. How can we finish the task faster? It’s obvious that we can either assign more people, or work more hours, or increase the efficiency of the work.
5: The project manager decides to reduce the time needed for tasks D and F by one day each. How effective will this reduction be in achieving his aim of maintaining the original finish time for the project?
D & F falls in the critical path. Thus reducing the time in D & F by one day each makes the initial critical path shorter by 2 days that means it is no longer the critical path. The completion date for this task is reduced to 12 days. The new critical path is A, B, C, and E, I which takes 13 days to complete. Thus Reducing tasks D and F each by one day would only shorten the project by one day since after a 2 day reduction.

Chapter 4 Question 3

Chapter 4 Question 3
Perform a financial analysis for a project using the format provided in the format provided in the figure 4.3. assume the projected cost and benefits for this projects are spread over four years as follows:estimated cost are $100000 in year1 and $25000 each upcoming years. Use an 8% discount rate. Create the spreadsheet and calculate clearly NPV,ROI and PBP. In addition write a paragraph explaining whether you would recommend investing in this project, based on your financial analysis.

According to the calculations done,
The NPV came to be $38850 which denotes that the net present value is positive and there is a gain in the project. This means that the return from the project exceeds the cost of project. Usually the project with the higher NPV is selected rather than the project with the least NPV. Here in this case there is only one project therefore the we just need to analyze whether the NPV is positive or higher.
The Pay back period for the project is about three years it means that the project will take about three years to recoup. But for the information technology project it is said that they should have the payback period of about 1 year because of the rapid pace of changing business and technology. There are many organizations that cannot achieve the payback within 1 year but it does not mean that the project cannot go. Instead there is a need to understand the organizations financial expectation for project.
Return on Investment for this project shows the positive nature of the job project. ROI is 26% that means that the revenue generated from this project is 26%. hence the project can be recommended.
Thus looking at all these three methods of selecting projects. Two of them are in favor of the project and the PBP is quite uncertain. The investment on the project can be done inspite of the PBP for the project is 3 yrs.

Chapter 4 Question 1

Chapter 4 Question 1
Write a two-page paper based on the opening case. Answer the following questions:
a) What do you think the real problem was in this case?
b) Does the case present a realistic scenario? Why or why not?
c) Was Nick Carson a good project manager? Why or why not?
d) What could Nick have done to be a better project manager?
e) What should top management have done to help Nick?

a) Once going through the opening case I realized that the problem with the project was the wrong people in the wrong job. While selecting the manager who is going to lead such a biggest project special attention should be given because the project manager is the one who will guide the project towards the right direction. The other problem realized is the commitment of the managers. There must be some problem with the resources or top level commitment or some management reasons why the managers are leaving the project. At the last moment the leadership was given to nick who is very good in the execution of the project but not controlling and tracking the project as the good project manager.
Even though nick tried from his side but the top management were unable to cope up with him and guide him with what they wanted time to time. So there is a problem not only in the managers’ selection but also in the top level commitment.
b) Yes I think that the case presents the realistic scenario because there are many such cases that we hear and face in our own daily life. Everyone cannot be a good manager, thus in this project wrong selection of mangers lead to the change of mangers 3times in the period of the project. It may have hampered the project. The project is very large and takes long time to be completed and such problems may add further more delay in the project completion. Similarly a person Nick was assigned a team manager who has only a technical background so he however completed the project in time but the management role was not done properly.
c) After the project been handed over to Nick Carson, he completed the project in time. This demonstrates that he is an intelligent person with a technical mind who can fulfill or do whatever the project was asked to do. He accomplished the goal anyway but according to the top level management they have still complain about Nick that he has not done all the project works properly. They tried to say that he was good with the technical portions but not with the reporting and management parts.
d) Nick was the software developer before he is assigned the task of project manager. Instead of focusing only on the task of software development he should also focus on the responsibilities of a project manager. He must have adequately inspected the project and prepare proper documentation and give the progress report to the top management about the project in the timely manner. He kept everything with himself so that no other i.e. top management is unaware by the progress of the project. They cannot track anything about the project plan, what portion of the project has been done what is going on, and how is it doing its activities? All these types of questions are left for the top level staffs. Nick can create a detail project management plans including schedules and progress tracking activities. He can present the status report to the top management
e) If Nick was unable to get his responsibilities of manager, it is the responsibility of the top management to remind him. They can provide the templates that include the information that they need and they even did not give any instructions that he need to follow. So they may give examples or instructions to follow, top management may provide the stakeholders’ analysis to Nick so that it will help him manage the project and understand users need and expectations. They must try to understand Nicks need and provide him with the more support. E.g. provide an assistant with some project

Chapter 5 question 1

Chapter 5 question 1
Use power point slide, Visio or similar software to create a WBS in the chart form (similar to an organizational chart- see the sample in figure 5-2). Assume the level 1 categories are initiating, planning, executing, controlling and closing. Under the execution section, include level 2 categories of all analysis, design, prototyping, testing, implementation and support. Assume the level 3 categories includes level 3 items called training, documentation, user support, enhancements.
Ans: WBS in chart form organized by phase and in different levels

Chapter5 Question 5

Chapter5 Question 5
Read one of the suggested readings or find an article related to project scope management . Write one page summary of the article, its key conclusions, and your opinion.

This is an article by Tom Mochal publised in 16th Nov 2004
Title: “Poor scope-management practices could precipitate project failure”
URL:http://articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-5034542.html
This is an article that describes how important is to invoke a scope in the project. Article also conveys the massage that project management does not begin and end with defining project and planning a project.
The article says this way; Most of the projects fail due to poor planning. Defining and planning a project is the only first phase of the project. After the planning is done, it is needed to be worked out properly so as to finish the given work within the time frame. But sometimes there are some problems rose which is almost inevitable part of the project like the user or the stakeholders wants to add something more or modify within the project. This is where the scope management comes into action, instead if the project team will try to fulfill all the new modification every time then it will have effect not only in the project completion date but also in the budget and loads of trouble.
Therefore scope is the area that helps to get rid of such problems, thus scope management comers into action. It starts with scope definition. The better is the scope defined the more successful is the project. The main purpose of defining the scope is to get the clear picture of what to be done and the boundaries in which the project should run. Different aspects of the scope like type of deliverables, life cycle process, type of data, data source, organizational scope, stakeholders, major functionalities like decisions, reporting etc can help in the successful completion of the project.
It is obvious with the project that the user asks for some changes in the processes. In this competitive and fast changing world & business the change is very fast so the stakeholder may ask for some changes when the project is on the way. There request should be taken into consideration because is the change is not given the importance then the deliverable will be of less value to the users and the stakeholder or may be useless. Therefore there should be always a process in each project that is there to maintain the changes in the project scope by the sponsors. If the sponsor ask for the change the project manager needs to evaluate the changing activities, its impact on the business, project, and then inform the sponsor about that evaluation. Sponsor will definitely understand the need of additional budget and time needed it include those changes in the project and allocate it as per required.
While managing the scope there are some problems encountered:
Scope creep when there are lots of small changes embedded in the project, that has taken too much time and budget. Thus no longer can make budget and must delay commitments.
Different people like users, stakeholders, client mangers may ask for change. But every change asked by them should not be done without the permission of the sponsor. Because the sponsor may not agree for some changes and changing those things in the project may be a mistake.
The project team accountability occurs when the changes are to be made on the project. If the project team without consulting to the team manger or other group members just starts changing what they found out by interaction with the client will cause their activities to be completed late and affect the whole project.
In the process of project if the project was found to be out of control in the terms of budget and schedule always try to find out the main reason behind it. If possible then the project scope change should be done before the project processes.
So after going through the article I think that the project scope management is a crucial state of the project that can be changed from time to time according to the need of business. Thus to cope up with the fast changing environment and to make the project more useful to the stakeholders it is necessary to accept changes. Accepting the changes does not mean that whatever the users, stakeholders or other those related to the project say go on changing all those, but analyze the change, evaluate it and then give the result of the evaluation to the authorized person. If the sponsor is ready for the change then go for change asking some additional budget and time if necessary. And their must be good accountability between team members thus the changes are known by all the team and can put team effort to complete the project in right committed time and with all the functions needed for stakeholders and users.

Chapter2,Question 5

Chapter2
Question5
Write a one to two page summary of an article about the importance of top management support for the successful information technology projects.

Article title: A Short Primer onLeadership
This is an article that has been done under the guidance of prof: R. Ravi Kumar Ph.D. Indian Institute of management, Banglore by Praneet Tiwari published Sun, 7th may 2006 16:49:16-0700. this is an article that examines the relation ship of a leader with the organizational culture, motivation and diversity.
People on the top management are the key stake holders in the projects. They are the person who guides the whole team into the right direction. Their commitment will lead mangers to lead projects. Yukl G. Says that “ A leader is one whose main task is influencing objectives and strategies, influencing commitment and compliance in task behaviour, influencing group maintenance and identification of ways to influence the culture of an organization “ Thus by saying this he mean that the leader are those that gives the vision of their project to the system participants. What to do and not to do is all guided by the leaders, thus tracking the subject in the right decision and towards the right path which will lead to the success of the project. One of the important responsibilities of the top management is to create win-win relationship between stakeholders both internal and external to overcome or bridge the gap that exist between the supplier, customers and employees. Top management create new ideas in the project and circulate it to different staffs that will help project flow more swiftly and smoothly. Top level management builds up team spirit in their members, inspire them, and motivate the staffs providing them different opportunities and rewards. Top management are the role model for those who work under them. They help in checking the deviation of the project done till date and suggest the corrective measure and action. They motivate their staff toward their work by promising rewards for good performances, recognizes accomplishments exchange of rewards for performance. They provide the sense of mission, instills, pride, generates trust and respect and communicate the high desired expectation. They promote intelligence, rationality and calculated risk taking. They give personalized attention to team thus team members are always in favour of their leaders. They coaches, advices and mentors the project. They are like a guardian to the team members, team member when feel that they are lost their top level members are there to guide them and they are those on which the team members can rely and have trust. Top level staffs are committed and supportive in the project. Some times there are some unspecified needs seen in the project so to fulfil these uncalculated needs the top management can help the project managers to get those in the timely manner without delaying the project. They are like the brain in the body of the project members. They have cooperation from even the people of other parts of the organization thus there is an easy flow of information from different parts through the top management to the project team. They set standards for the team mangers thus they can go accordingly and succeed. They are always ready with the contingency plans for the project. They are dreamers and transform their dream to their project teams. They make the project team aware of the risk that the project can face during its processes thus making them aware initially will help the team to prepare for the worst. If sometimes there are some critical cases in the project the top level staff takes the responsibility and helps the team to unit and face the critical situation. In other words they anticipate the barriers and take strategic initiatives balancing strategy and people.
Thus this article describes about what are the power and authorities of the top level management and how their presence lead the project toward the success.
References
:http://blogs.sun.com/praneet/resource/Leadership.pdf

Chapter 1, Question 3

Chapter 1

Question3:Search the Internet for the terms project management, project management careers, project portfolio management, and information technology project management. Find at least three websites that provide interesting information on one of the topics. In a one-to-two page paper, summarize key information about these three websites and as well as the project management institutes's website.

Ans:Project management is a carefully planned and organized effort to accomplish a specific (and usually) one-time effort, for example, construct a building or implement a new computer system. It includes different activities like developing a project plan, implementing plan, long with careful controls to stay on the "critical path".
Project management careers represents the future of the project management discipline hinges on the successful adoption of the philosophy of project portfolio management (PPM), a leading project management consultant has cautioned.
The goal of PPM is to organize a series of projects into a single portfolio that describes objectives, coats, timelines, accomplishments, resources, and risk.
Managing Information Technology Projects gives systems project managers field-proven tools and step-by-step methodologies to start and complete every project—hardware, software, or integration—within prescribed parameters. Coverage includes:•Organizing information technology project teams and developing project plans•Risk management issues for IT projects• Systems engineering• Customer requirements and service• Project monitoring, control, closeout, and assessments
www.gantthead.com
www.ittoolbox.com
www.4pm.com
IT toolbox is an online platform that enables everyone to share and gain knowledge about IT. It has a community of professionals that allows everyone to access the information put forward by the professionals, and worldwide users. It provides the practical and timely knowledge about the new and the upcoming IT technologies. It provides different platforms like groups, blogs, wikki, knowledge bases and professional networking. It also has job centre that helps in finding the IT jobs, if any company or person are interested in the advertisement of their IT products, or technology they can use “ITtoolbox” for the purpose. ITtoolbox has 30 Web sites with over 1 million pages of community-generated content providing practical IT information. ITtoolbox even contains research page that contains different research white papers, survey reports, tutorials, podcasts, downloads etc.


Gantthead.com
It is an online community for IT managers. This is built with the mission to make IT managers more successful, this will help the IT managers to start their process of the project and helps to customise their needs, there are deliverables in the form of templates and examples that can help in the fast completion of the project and raise the productivity. As the website allows the platform to the experts to share their experience and knowledge, there are lots of suggestions. There is news and stories related that matters the project that is needed to be accomplished. Managers can have tips on the ways to manage all their effort that they put on their projects. Above all these the main advantage is managers can remotely log in and have different sessions like question answer, review of the deliverables, participating in the meeting through remote login, or can even have the session in the telephone whatever is best suited. It provides different articles related to different project management topics, problems encountered during projects by different project managers, etc,. The users have access to this website for free, they can simple login and enjoy all the benefits.
www.niwotridge.com is a site that has started many years ago as one of the consulting resource site. It provides different materials for the professionals as well as colleagues. It provides the general information and resources like programming language tools and system, IT strategy, Process patterns, journals & magazines publications, encyclopaedias, system architecture etc. users can also have a look on domain specific link like manufacturing, cost management, system engineering, balanced scorecard, IT governance, earned value and other more related links. There is a list of articles, columns, essays, white papers, presentations, technical notes and there is even a blog which provides a space for publication of materials. Thus this is one of the oldest and useful sites for project management participants.

www.pmi.org
It’s already 36 years that PMI is providing the services, and is one of the leading associations that provide membership facility for project management profession, and it is involved in the advocacy for the profession, it helps professionals by setting the standards. It also provides access to different results and reports of research done. It offers different certifications, networking, and community involvement opportunities.
Now it has upgraded a new version of pmi.org that is more customized and is easy to access. PMI provides different training and events that are held. Project managers can take advantages of latest technology news, seminar, related to their projects. Organizational solutions are there to guide. There is a platform for the career framework. Most of the websites that support the project management should be or are certified under PMI.

References :
http://www.managementhelp.org/plan_dec/project/project.htm#anchor440783
http://www.zdnet.com.au/jobs/news_trends/soa/Project-management-s-perilous future/0,130056653,139250536,00.htm?ref=search