Project Time Management:572219

Question:

This assignment allows you to develop your skills in planning a project, particularly scheduling the work and resources required to achieve a project’s objective. It also requires you to apply project management software to aid the planning, analysis and reporting of your project.
The following describes a fictitious but realistic project that you are to plan and manage as though you were the project manager and an active participant. You are to compile a schedule utilising MS-Project* to plan and manage this project. You will also be required to analyse and maintain that schedule.
You will be assessed on your ability to display an understanding of project scheduling concepts and you are expected to be able to apply the software to a degree that enables you to record and display appropriate project data to support your responses. Advanced skills with MS-Project are not required but clear presentation of your plans is essential.
The Project
You live and work in Perth, Western Australia with your partner/spouse and 2 teenaged children. You work as an executive responsible for the delivery of projects for a large, infrastructure development corporation. You and your family have (and only travel on) Australian passports.
Because of your recent successes with the delivery of two major infrastructure projects within Australia, you are invited to present a keynote paper on the first day of a 3-day international, industry conference to be held on 8th to 10th May 2017 in Prague. Your CEO is very pleased that the company’s expertise will be showcased and the firm will reimburse the cost of your travel and accommodation, however you will need to use your annual leave (you have more than 6 weeks owing) and arrange your own accommodation and travel.
Your family are very supportive. They have recently been discussing the idea of an overseas family holiday (before the youngsters become too old to enjoy travelling with the family), so you accept the invitation as conference speaker and take advantage of this opportunity to incorporate a family holiday to Europe. In a family meeting, it is determined that, to experience Europe properly, this holiday should be for 3-weeks. More time would put pressure on you at work and schooling. The family agree that the trip should include 3 or more countries (including Czech Republic) with at least 5 full days in each country visited. You will be attending the full conference although the other members of your family cannot, so they will sightsee over this time. Preferring not to start the trip being separated, you agree that at least one country should be visited before the Czech Republic. Having agreed to these constraints, you proceed to plan your holiday.
Your application for 3 weeks annual leave is granted for this trip, however your work commitments are such that you cannot leave Perth until after a hand-over meeting with your major client in Perth on 27th April 2017.
Assignment Requirements
Part A. Create a project schedule: (40 marks)
1. (20 marks) Develop a work breakdown structure (WBS) for this project. This should be structured to show all activities required to meet to project’s objectives including planning, delivering and concluding all related work and holiday events.
You can develop this WBS to whatever level of detail you require, however project reports in this assignment should show 50 to 75 items (ie. between 50 and 75 lines in the WBS of any report). Note that this is not a restriction on the level of detail for your planning but it is a restriction on the level of detail of your reporting.
2. (20 marks) Based on your WBS for the project, estimate the required resources and durations for the project activities.
Provide a Gantt Chart showing the plan for your project, including dependencies between the activities that comprise your project schedule and show the resources and the estimated durations of the components of your schedule.
In your Gantt Chart, clearly identify the start and end of the project and the dates planned for the work activities and any milestones that will need to be achieved to successfully manage the execution of the project. Show any date constraints and ensure that your schedule meets these.

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Part B. Time planning & control: (20 marks)
1. (10 marks) The sequence of tasks in a project schedule is based on dependencies, which may be either hard/mandatory or soft/discretionary. Briefly describe these different types of dependencies and illustrate both of these with specific examples taken from your Part A project schedule.
As a guide, your answer should not be more than 200 words.
2. (10 marks) Explain an effort-driven task. Select an effort-driven tasks from your Part A.WBS. Describe how you estimated the duration of this task (including the method or technique used) and the basis for any assumptions made.
As a guide, your answer should not be more than 200 words.
Part C. Managing a Variation: (30 marks)
On the day before you were due to depart your first destination country in Europe, your plans are significantly disrupted. Your partner is robbed of a small amount of money and, more significantly, the passports, other than yours which you always carry separately. As a matter of urgency, you report the incident to the police and contact the embassy to arrange for replacement passports. Unfortunately, you discover, it takes a full 7 days for passports to be replaced.
Of course, in reality, emergency passports or travel papers could normally be sourced in much less time, however, for this assignment the 7 day delay is a mandatory constraint. Also, as a non-European national, you cannot cross national borders without carrying your passport or authorised travel papers.
You immediately make appropriate arrangements and reorganise your travel plans to manage these events. You have the option to arrange for an additional one week of leave to compensate for the disruption to the holiday.
1. (15 marks) Re-plan your holiday to include this variation, ensuring that you manage any significant risks associated with changing and extending the holiday.
Provide a Gantt Chart showing the revised WBS and schedule for the project (limited to 50 to 75 lines) and showing your progress on the project to date and clearly highlighting any changes to the planned activities.
2. (15 marks) Explain why you managed the change as you did and the effects of this change on the planned project, including additional project tasks and activities that have changed or are no longer required. Explain if and how you can still meet the objectives of your project within these new constraints on your holiday.
As a guide, this explanation should not be more than about 350 words.

Answer:

B.1.1 Hard/Mandatory dependencies

The dependencies in project activities are established due to the logical and physical causalities. The hard dependency or mandatory dependency is a sure factor that evaluates the physical relationship between the activities of the project. For example- the concrete cure is a must have factor for developing the paint functions for the wall.

The hard dependency in the project of development of the project initialization operation is being evaluated for the formation of the relationship in project. The activity of check-in hotel in project and have a sleep is dependent in mandatory form with a constraint of As-soon-as. The passenger would have to be physically present in the hotel to check in and have the sleep. The activity of have to sleep is dependent on the check in hotel activity.

B.1.2 Soft/discretionary dependencies

The project made for development of 3 weeks conference trip to 3 countries of Europe. The development of the project plan is bounded by hard dependencies. The project activity of Fly to Berlin and the activity of pick up rental car are connected via Finish-to-Start dependency. The traveler would have to get a rental car after he/she lands in Berlin. It is a case of soft dependency. Hence it is evident that the later activity of renting a car would not be held possible without the passenger landing in Berlin. However, the passenger would

B.2. Effort Driven Task

The effort driven task is an analysis of the task that either has been allocated any resource or removed from the report. The duration of the project is being evaluated for resource extraction and assignments. However, the allocation or removal does not affect the total amount of work done. The car drive in the three countries is the most effort driven activity as it took almost 22 hours of time. The most time consuming car driving activities for the passenger took place in France-Paris and it amounted to 12 hours. However, in Berlin the drive took 6 hours and in Czech the drive took 4 hours. The rented cars would be evaluated for forming the appropriate effort driven example for the project.

Total time driven = Time driven in Berlin + Time driven in Czech + Time driven in France

Time driven in Berlin = Time driven for ‘Drive to Hotel’ + Time driven for ‘Drive to Czech Border’

= 4 hours + 2 hours = 6 hours

Time driven in Czech = Time driven for ‘Drive to Prague’

= 4 hours

Time driven in France = Time driven for ‘Drive to Paris’

= 12 hours

So, Total time driven = 6 hours + 4 hours + 12 hours = 22 hours

The resource used for the driving activity is Vehicle

.1.1 WBS Revised

C.1.2 Revised Gantt chart

The changes in Gantt chart are,

• The included activities of the project are shown with Yellow Filled boxes.

• The Red inked dates show the changes in project dates due to the inclusion of Passport robbery

• The final completion date of the project is being shown in red ink with yellow highlighted box

The inclusion of the passport robbed activity would result in increasing the overall duration of the project activities. The change in the project had been highlighted in Gantt chart shown in the previous section of the assignment. The whole tour have to be delayed as the passenger could not go to next place without collecting the new passport issues from the Embassy office. It is important for evaluating the changes in the project. The constraint of less than 3 weeks tour of 3 countries has been increased by one week delay. The password theft had to be overcome by forming the development of the extension. (9 additional activities would be added in the project operations) and it would form the development of project activities. The passenger would immediately have to report to the nearest police station and they would contact the embassy explaining the situation. The passenger would also have to explain the situation to their workplace/school for getting the additional one week leave. The insurance agencies would be informed for assisting in the passport acquirement.

The password collection is a mandatory dependency activity and the linkage if hard dependency in the project file. The passengers are unable to move to next location without taking the passport from the embassy. All the tasks have been rescheduled and the final arrival of the tourists has changed to 7^th Nov. The risk management theories are developed for the formation of the effective and smart compliance to the project operations. It is very important for forming the appropriate development of project management activities. Each of the activities have been rescheduled and none of the activity is modified.