Question

After the scope has been approved, the next step in the process is determining what is required to complete the project successfully. This includes evaluating what needs to be procured, human resources needed, allocation of funds, as well as gaining an understanding of the support needed within the organization to deliver the project. This moves the project to the next phase: planning. This typically starts at the define stage and continues through most of the execution phase. The planning stage focuses on development of schedules, budgets, resource requirements—including personnel and funding.

At this point of the project the WBS has been developed and the rest of the project plan and a Gantt chart can be completed. This includes identifying project tasks, task dependencies, milestones, resource assignments, and tasks duration as well as evaluation of the critical path, lag and lead times, slack and float.

Respond to the following topic:

·      Why is it important to ensure the WBS has accurate time and cost estimates?

·      What estimating method, as described in Chapter 5, would you use to estimate the time, cost and resources required to complete each deliverable / task for a new project?

·      In your organization or projects you have seen, which resources types, of the ones described in Chapter 8, are the ones most difficult to schedule accurately and why?

·      Assume your project is about 1/3 complete and due to critical organizational objective changes, the project needs to be completed several weeks sooner. As the Project Manager, what planning options do you have? What estimate variables will be affected by your proposed plan modification?

·      Within the context of the project to create a website or move to a new house, describe the different types of costs you would include and the cost classification they fall under.

Answer 1

Ans 1

Work BreakDown Structure has project scope broken down into manageable components. These components need to be completed on time and within budget to ensure that the overall project gets completed on time as many components are dependent on each other.

Ans 2.

I would use the wideband Delphi Technique to estimate the time, cost and resources required for the completion of the project.

Ans 3

The most difficult resource to schedule are people. This is because people are working on multiple projects simultaneously and therefore are constrained on time.

Ans 4

To complete the project several weeks earlier I would look at various activities and which of them can be crashed to achieve the required timeline. This would require additional resources in terms of cost and people to finish the work early. I would look at all activities to see how additional cost and resource allocation can reduce the timeline.