A&D High Tech (a): Managing Projects for Success: a Negative View

Case #3

A&D High Tech (A): Managing Projects for Success:

A Negative View

1. What is the estimated project completion date? (Assume there are no holidays and ignore the sunk cost of the planning team’s effort)

The estimated project completion date is TUE 11/13/13 with duration of 127 days. After leveling and re-allocating work along the project line, the project got delayed for 3 days so that the completion day moved up to FRI 11/21/13 (total duration of 130 days). (MS Project 2007)

2. What is the total cost? How much of the total cost are labor costs? Capital costs?

Total Cost: $98,500 + $844,980 = $943,480

Labor Cost: $ 844,980 (given result of project)

Capital Cost:

(12 Windows 2000 workstations*$3,000) + (5 Window 2000 servers*$12,500) = $98,500

3. What is (are) the critical path(s) in the project? What is the level of risk in completing tasks on the critical path(s)? Explain.

The critical path is added to the appendix of this case report. As shown in Figure 1 and 2, many tasks are correlated so that one critical phase can affect the other. Here, we divided the entire process into three parts: namely by “Detailed Design” part (on the left hand of the network diagram), “Create Functional Requirements (upper side),” and “Development & Unit Test (bottom left side).” Even though, we leveled the resource referring on automated re-allocation methods, except for 7 phases in this project, most of the critical stages remained still critical. These seven stages are “Create data requirements,” “Gather testing requirements,” “Create System Test Plan & Test Cases,”“Write system test scripts,” and on the other part of the network diagram, “Updating and Calculating Shopping Cart,” Submit Order,” “Check Order History & Order Status,” and “Create ERP Interface Requirements.” Considering that most of the leveled tasks are components of “Detailed Design” and “Development & Unit Test,” (tasked that still remained critical, even...