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A. Identify the Challenges/Problems encountered: B. Lessons learned from this project event (at least 3) II. During an ongoing Project, a Project Member (who has a critical role in the project) goes on a leave due to personal concerns. A. What can the team do about this? B. If you are the Project Manager what will be the solutions/alternatives to this? C. Have you experienced this on your school group projects? What was/were your solution/s for this?

A. Identify the Challenges/Problems encountered: B. Lessons learned from this project event (at least 3) II. During an ongoing Project, a Project Member (who has a critical role in the project) goes on a leave due to personal concerns. A. What can the team do about this? B. If you are the Project Manager what will be the solutions/alternatives to this? C. Have you experienced this on your school group projects? What was/were your solution/s for this?

Understanding Business
Understanding Business
12th Edition
ISBN:9781259929434
Author:William Nickels
Publisher:William Nickels
Chapter1: Taking Risks And Making Profits Within The Dynamic Business Environment
Section: Chapter Questions
Problem 1CE
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Project Management Case Studies I. Case Study: A Scheduling Challenge I was assigned to manage a data communication chip design and test project with a team of 16 engineers and two international subcontractors. The project duration was a year. Initially, I put together a project schedule in a week that included all domestic and international resources, all dependencies between tasks, all critical document delivery dates to the customer, all internal and customer design review meetings, the customer's acceptance test dates, and payment milestones. I also included all the pertinent holidays and forecasted special events for each team member. The whole project schedule ended up being a 570-line monster file on MS Project. I did not have anyone helping me on scheduling. The schedule was a very dynamic document. I had to update it daily and I had to present it to my team, to my upper management, and to my customer on a weekly basis. The schedule updates, estimating work- performed percentages, and finding errors in the schedule took a tremendous amount of my time. I was falling behind in managing my team's people and my subcontractors. Work scheduled and work performed were critical inputs to my earned value analysis for my project. I had to be fairly accurate in my work- performed estimates. These work- performed estimates went directly into my project's schedule performance indices and cost performance indices. My management judged my project's progress and health with these indices. I had to do my scheduling in a more efficient and a more accurate way. I decided to break down the monster schedule file into 12 major task groups and two subcontractor groups. Each major task group's schedule had about 40 tasks. Then I created a master schedule that included the results of major task groups, all critical document delivery dates to the customer, all internal and customer design review meetings, the customer's acceptance test dates, and payment milestones. I only presented the master schedule to my team, to my upper management, and to my customer. If they had questions about the progress being made in a major task group or at the subcontractor, I also presented that particular schedule to them. This breakdown of the total schedule helped me a lot in managing the updates to schedules and reduced my time to almost half in dealing with my scheduling responsibilities. It was much easier to update smaller schedules and to find errors in them. During the review meetings, my team, my upper management, and my customer appreciated dealing with the master schedule. Schedule review times in the meetings got shorter. On average, we were spending an hour going over the monster schedule. With the master schedule, the schedule review times averaged about 20 minutes. Creating the initial schedule took about a week. I had to discuss and finalize each task's duration, order, and dependencies with its owner. Each team member had to buy in to what he or she was committing to accomplish in a given time. Everyone on the team had a different work pace and work experience. It was crucial to understand the work performance rate of every one of my team members. I had to do the same thing with my two international subcontractors by teleconferencing. I included an 85% work production efficiency factor to the schedule. I had to include extensive training time for five of my novice team members. I tried to keep each task's duration between one and three weeks so that the task progress estimates could be predicted with accuracy. I included all the observed holidays for my domestic and international team members. For each team member, I included his or her personal time- off days during the project duration. Gathering all this data to input into MS Project was painstaking. It was worth the entire week I spent to gather all the pertinent data for scheduling. For a large project like this data communication chip design and test project, I should have asked for a scheduler from my management to help me. Such a person was not in my project budget.
Transcribed Image Text:Project Management Case Studies I. Case Study: A Scheduling Challenge I was assigned to manage a data communication chip design and test project with a team of 16 engineers and two international subcontractors. The project duration was a year. Initially, I put together a project schedule in a week that included all domestic and international resources, all dependencies between tasks, all critical document delivery dates to the customer, all internal and customer design review meetings, the customer's acceptance test dates, and payment milestones. I also included all the pertinent holidays and forecasted special events for each team member. The whole project schedule ended up being a 570-line monster file on MS Project. I did not have anyone helping me on scheduling. The schedule was a very dynamic document. I had to update it daily and I had to present it to my team, to my upper management, and to my customer on a weekly basis. The schedule updates, estimating work- performed percentages, and finding errors in the schedule took a tremendous amount of my time. I was falling behind in managing my team's people and my subcontractors. Work scheduled and work performed were critical inputs to my earned value analysis for my project. I had to be fairly accurate in my work- performed estimates. These work- performed estimates went directly into my project's schedule performance indices and cost performance indices. My management judged my project's progress and health with these indices. I had to do my scheduling in a more efficient and a more accurate way. I decided to break down the monster schedule file into 12 major task groups and two subcontractor groups. Each major task group's schedule had about 40 tasks. Then I created a master schedule that included the results of major task groups, all critical document delivery dates to the customer, all internal and customer design review meetings, the customer's acceptance test dates, and payment milestones. I only presented the master schedule to my team, to my upper management, and to my customer. If they had questions about the progress being made in a major task group or at the subcontractor, I also presented that particular schedule to them. This breakdown of the total schedule helped me a lot in managing the updates to schedules and reduced my time to almost half in dealing with my scheduling responsibilities. It was much easier to update smaller schedules and to find errors in them. During the review meetings, my team, my upper management, and my customer appreciated dealing with the master schedule. Schedule review times in the meetings got shorter. On average, we were spending an hour going over the monster schedule. With the master schedule, the schedule review times averaged about 20 minutes. Creating the initial schedule took about a week. I had to discuss and finalize each task's duration, order, and dependencies with its owner. Each team member had to buy in to what he or she was committing to accomplish in a given time. Everyone on the team had a different work pace and work experience. It was crucial to understand the work performance rate of every one of my team members. I had to do the same thing with my two international subcontractors by teleconferencing. I included an 85% work production efficiency factor to the schedule. I had to include extensive training time for five of my novice team members. I tried to keep each task's duration between one and three weeks so that the task progress estimates could be predicted with accuracy. I included all the observed holidays for my domestic and international team members. For each team member, I included his or her personal time- off days during the project duration. Gathering all this data to input into MS Project was painstaking. It was worth the entire week I spent to gather all the pertinent data for scheduling. For a large project like this data communication chip design and test project, I should have asked for a scheduler from my management to help me. Such a person was not in my project budget.
He or she would have had to charge the company overhead or erode my project's margin. In hindsight, gathering all the scheduling data from my team members and from my international subcontractors gave me a good insight on everyone's capabilities and work performance rates. A. Identify the Challenges/Problems encountered: B. Lessons learned from this project event (at least 3) II. During an ongoing Project, a Project Member (who has a critical role in the project) goes on a leave due to personal concerns. A. What can the team do about this? B. If you are the Project Manager what will be the solutions/alternatives to this? C. Have you experienced this on your school group projects? What was/were your solution/s for this?
Transcribed Image Text:He or she would have had to charge the company overhead or erode my project's margin. In hindsight, gathering all the scheduling data from my team members and from my international subcontractors gave me a good insight on everyone's capabilities and work performance rates. A. Identify the Challenges/Problems encountered: B. Lessons learned from this project event (at least 3) II. During an ongoing Project, a Project Member (who has a critical role in the project) goes on a leave due to personal concerns. A. What can the team do about this? B. If you are the Project Manager what will be the solutions/alternatives to this? C. Have you experienced this on your school group projects? What was/were your solution/s for this?
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