PROJECT TIME MANAGEMENT A C Table of Contents Assumptions ......................................................................................................................... 3 Part A ................................................................................................................................... 4 Part B ................................................................................................................................... 6 Part C ................................................................................................................................... 7 References .......................................................................................................................... 10 2 Assumptions  Morning meal will be provided by the hotel on premise only unless and until early morning travel is involved. In that case, the breakfast would be during travel.  Cancellation costs for tickets will be up to $1000 of the total fare for a given ticket  No rent will be charged for the visitors if they wish to stay in their rooms as per the norms (Deeprose 2002)  Pick-up and drop facility via tourist buses will be provided for the visitors and lunch will be provided onboard the tourist buses.  Children who are in the sub-teen age can get a visa if they are accompanied by one of the parents to travel. 3 Part A 4 5 Part B Task dependencies are of two types mainly. They can be defined as:  Hard dependency- Time bound tasks can fall under this category. The schedule can force these task to make few tasks dependent on them as well.  Soft dependency – These are tasks where resource allocation plays an important role since resources have to be aligned for different milestones in a project. (Dinsmore and CabanisBrewin 2011). There are different pros and cons for different dependencies. For example, in a soft dependency dates can be flexible depending on the availability of the resource for a particular job since the soft dependency is bound by resource allocation and their availability. However, in a hard dependency dates are not flexible since the entire task is bound by time and project schedule. Another example of this scenario could be the travel plans of the family being dependent on the issue of visas to everyone. This is a hard dependency and in case the visa does not come through the family is ineligible to travel. (Heerkens 2002). Another scenario which can be considered is the application of leave of absence of kids in their respective schools. The leave of application can be applied once the visa has been processed and is granted logically. However, the school authorities can be informed about the travel plans in advance and the visa documents can be submitted later on as well. This is an example of how a soft dependency operates. (Kerzner 2001). Solution 2 – Effort driven tasks are those tasks which the project keeps the sum total of the work at is current capacity only. This value is independent of the number of resources assigned to the task. In case new resources are assigned to the task, then the remaining work is assigned to them. In case a resource is removed from the task, the remaining work is re-allocated to the remaining resources for the given task. (Onofri and Spagnuolo 2014). The project planning is one such activity which is an effort-driven task for example. In this case, if the wife and husband both decide to finish a particular task together, it will take them half the number of hours of effort. If they were to do a task individually, then the amount of effort would double for the task. 6 Part C 7 8 Solution – The changes in the travel schedule of the wife have added a predecessor in the WBS since the wife needs to get the visa application approved. The process of visa being granted is for 8 days approximately. The wife would not be able to leave before 14th October and the family will reach London by the 7th October 2016. The husband needs to re-schedule the tickets to a later date and find the shortest route from London to Luxemburg. With the cancellation or re-scheduling costs incurring, the husband will have to leave by 12th of October since he has to attend the workshop. The wife and kids will have to wait till 14th October since they don’t have a valid visa yet. The additional costs of the change in plans basically include an extra stay in a hotel and extra food. The husband will have to pay additional costs for his booking as well there will be additional costs for re-scheduling of booking for the wife and kids. The following activities needs to be performed by the husband in order to incorporate the changes:  Re-schedule flights and hotel bookings  Find shortest route from London to Luxemburg.  Find safest route from London to Luxemburg for wife and kids.  Re-issue of visa for wife and kids. This will include visa appointment as well and visa fees.  Book a cab for the visa appointment for the wife and kids.  Additional stay and foods arrangements for the wife while they wait for their visa in London  Additional costs will be incurred for travel to the airport and hotel for picking up wife and kids. The costs associated with these changes are as follows: Event Cost ($) Cancellation of tickets 1000/person * 3 = 3000 Extended stay in Hotel 200*3 = 600 Shortest route from London to Luxemburg 400 Safest route from London to Luxemburg 1000 Appointment for VISA application 1000 9 Cab fare to the embassy for visa document 500 collection Food expenses for extended stay 1000 * 3 = 3000 Taxi to the airport for wife and kids 500 Re-schedule Hotel booking 500 * 3 = 1500 Re-scheduling of tickets 4000 Re-scheduling of hotel booking 3000 References Deeprose, Donna. 2002. Project Management. Oxford, U.K.: Capstone Pub. Dinsmore, Paul C and Jeannette Cabanis-Brewin. 2011. The AMA Handbook Of Project Management. New York: American Management Association. Heerkens, Gary. 2002. Project Management. New York: McGraw-Hill. Kerzner, Harold. 2001. Project Management. New York: John Wiley. Lewis, James P. 2007. Fundamentals Of Project Management. New York: American Management Association. Onofri, Simone and Claudia Spagnuolo. 2014. "Project Time Management: Gestione Per Fasi E Timeboxing". PROJECT MANAGER (IL), no. 17: 43-46. doi:10.3280/pm2014-017011. Wilson, Randal. Mastering Project Time Management, Cost, Control, And Quality Management. 10 Project Time Management Semester 2, 2016 Assignment 1 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 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 sub-teen children. You work as an executive responsible for the delivery of projects for a large, multinational financial services corporation. You and your family have (and only travel on) Australian passports. Because of your recent successes with some recent important business improvement projects, you receive an invitation to present a keynote paper on the first day of a 2-day international, corporate conference that your employer holds annually. This year, the conference will be held on 14th and 15th October 2016 in Luxembourg City. Your State Manager is very pleased that your skills has been recognised and the firm will reimburse the cost of your travel and accommodation, however you will need to use your annual leave and arrange your own accommodation and travel. You have accumulated more than 5 weeks leave that you can draw upon. Your family has recently been discussing an overseas holiday, so you elect to 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 and should include 3 or more countries (including Luxembourg) with at least 5 days in each country visited. You are required to attend the full conference although the other members of your family cannot, so they will sightsee over this time. 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 an all-day industrial hearing in Perth on 6th October 2016. 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 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 date constraints and ensure that your schedule meets these. Page 1 of 2 Project Time Management Part B. Time planning & control: (20 marks) 1. (10 marks) The sequence of tasks 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 project schedule of Part A of this assignment. As a guide, your answer should not be more than 200 words. 2. (10 marks) Explain an effort-driven task. Select one of the effort-driven tasks from your project WBS of Part A. Describe how you estimated the duration of that 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) After clearing immigration at your first destination in Europe, your partner is robbed of a small amount of money and, more significantly, the passports, other than yours which you carry separately. As soon as practicable, you report the incident to the police and contact the embassy to arrange for replacement passports. Unfortunately, you discover, it takes 8 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 8 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 a revised WBS and schedule for the project (limited to 50 to 75 lines) showing your progress on the project to date and clearly highlighting any changes to the planned activities. 2. (15 marks) Explain 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. Instructions  This is an individual assignment that requires you to present your own work.  The assignment is due on Wednesday 19th October 2016.  Present your work in a format that follows the above structure.  Presentation & layout of your assignment counts (10 marks).  A marking guide is provided to indicate how marks will be assessed and applied on this assignment.  Your assignment is to be submitted as soft copy (pdf file) via Turnitin on Blackboard. Ensure that the Guidelines for Soft Copy are followed. This is available on Blackboard under Assignments.  Provide your assignment using the Assignment Cover Sheet and the Marking Template (provided on Blackboard).  You may, but are not required to, reference scholarly texts and articles to support your arguments. If you do, referencing must conform to Curtin University guidelines (Chicago).  All Curtin policies apply to this work; particularly those related to plagiarism and late submission.  Marks will be deducted for non-compliance with the assignment instructions. * If you wish to use an alternate project scheduling and modelling software tool for the assignment (ie. other than MSProject), you must obtain the prior agreement of the lecturer. Page 2 of 2