The on Business - Case Study Example

a. The crash cost per day per activity is calculated in table 1 as shown below. Table 1: Crash cost per day Activity Normal Time Crash Time Time saved due to crashing Normal Cost Crash Cost Crash cost per day Extra cost due to crashing A 5 3 2 300 600 300 300 B 3 2 1 250 450 450 200 C 6 4 2 400 500 250 100 D 5 3 2 150 400 200 250 Total 1100 1950 850 b. Assuming linear network from A to D, all the activities (A, B, C and D) must be crashed by given timings in the table. c. As seen from Table 1.

1, the total extra cost to crash the project is $850 2. a. The conventional method in project management does not give a clear picture of the progress of the project. It only measures the overall progress on the basis of cost and time rather than relative to what was planned. b. In the EVM method, the present value of each activity is calculated and Earned value is calculated as a sum of these present values. This helps in tracking performance of each activity both with respect to time and cost. 3. Table 3.

1: Activities Duration Activity Duration Start Day End Day A 4 1 4 B 3 5 7 C 5 5 9 D 3 5 7 E 3 8 10 F 2 8 9 a. The resource conflict in the given project is in terms of Design Engineer as he/she is involved in two activities which occur concurrently. These activities are C and D. Activity C and D both start on day 5 and both continue together till end of day 7. Hence, for these 3 days there is a resource conflict. b. The conflict can be resolved if the design engineer performs activity D from day 5 to 7 because activity D is a predecessor to F.

However, activity C is not a predecessor to any activity and hence can be performed from day 7 to day 12. This will increase the project duration to 12 days i.e. (increase by 2 days). 4. a. The cost and schedule variances for each activity and the project are given in Table 4.1 below Table 4.1: Cost and Schedule Variances Activity A B C D E F Total Duration 3 6 3 2 3 2 Start Day 1 1 4 7 7 9 End Day 3 6 6 8 9 10 Total Budgeted Cost 4920 7680 15140 3980 5630 2270 39620 % complete at the end of day 7 100 100 100 35 10 0 Budgeted cost at end of day 7 4920 7680 15140 1990 1876.7 0 31606.7 Actual cost at end of day 7 4200 8740 18250 2600 560 0 34350 Earned value at end of day 7 4920 7680 15140 1393 563 0 29696 Cost Variance 720 -1060 -3110 -1207 3 0 -4654 Cost Variance Index 1.171429 0.87872 0.83 0.53577 1.0054 0.86451 Schedule Variance 0 0 0 -597 -1313.7 0 -1910.7 Schedule Variance Index 1 1 1 0.7 0.3 0.93955 b. At the end of day 7, the project has a negative schedule variance and the schedule variance index is below 1.

This implies that the project is behind schedule. Also the project has a negative cost variance and the cost variance index is below 1. This implies that the project is over-budget. Hence, the overall performance of the project is below par. 5. a. Assigning resources to various activities in a project in a way that is economically viable is called Resource allocation. It is based more on heuristics rather than purely scientific ways. It involves both basic allocation as well as planning for contingencies.

Resource leveling is a process of investigating unbalanced resource allocation. The unbalance may be in terms of overloads, under-loads, conflicts etc. Resource leveling can be achieved by transferring slacks away from peak demand periods. b. A project manager may adopt some remedies in order to complete the project in case of lack of resources. One of them is to work overtime. It may improve short term project performance but may impact negatively in the long term. Another alternative is to reallocate resources for activities on the critical path as it is the critical path that governs the project duration (techrepublic).

A project manager may decide to swap certain resources to achieve maximum productivity. A manger would also like to have a check on time constrained activities because wasting more resources on such activities doesn’t yield more output (techrepublic). A manager can contemplate converting sequential activities into parallel tasks. Finally a project manager can review the scope of the project and redesign the scope in accordance with available resources. References: 10 ways to get a slipping project back on track.

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