Scheduling and Project Management for Hard Rock Caf - Coursework Example

Scheduling and Project Management for Hard Rock CaféRepresenting such kind of information in a network program may be quite tasking hence the construction of the table of activities and their times, both early and late times. The critical path in a project is usually determined by the sequence of activities that have or take the longest time duration and have no slack. For the project that Hard Rock Café has, the critical path in this case is A-B-D-E-F-G-O. The completion time for the project is in 34 weeks which is the longest time duration for which all activities have been accomplished.

Question 2In crashing an activity, we are mostly concerned with the maintenance of the project’s schedule by ensuring that the original duration of the project by Hard Rock Café is accomplished. As activity B comprehends five weeks in order to complete it, and not the initial three weeks that had been allocated to it, the best way to crash this project based on the increase in duration time for activity B would be to revise the project’s schedule so as to maintain its original end date. To achieve that, it would be required that Activity O is crashed for an extra $1,800 in cost.

However, it is worth noting that there are other activities that can as well be crashed for fewer costs but, the achieved crashed time would be less than the anticipated period. For instance, Activity F could be crashed for a much lesser cost of $500 but, the attained or recovered time would only be one week of the two weeks that had been lost to activity B.It is impossible to crash Activity O by any time less than two weeks so as to maintain the original schedule. Suppose that this can be achieved then, we would assume that even the distribution of $900 in a single week for the crashing would still lead back to crashing Activities F and O for a cost of $1,400 each by one week.

Question 3In the carrying out of a project from start to completion, a project manager is definitely to be faced with numerous challenges both internally and externally. Some of these challenges that can be recognized and affiliated to the scenario of Hard Rock Café are as discussed herein. First, project managers are required to ensure that they thoroughly plan through all the aspects of the organization in a manner that solicits for the active involvement of all the involved functional areas.

This is so as to ensure that they obtain and maintain a plan that is realistic and which satisfies the commitment to the project (Pinto & Venkataraman, 2013). However, this is not quite simple to attain hence, being largely classified as a challenge. Second, managers are faced with the challenge of having to control the organization’s manpower that is needed by the project. Third, the managers are challenged by the manner in which they can be able to control the basic technical definitions of the project.

In this, they are required to ensure that the cost and technical tradeoffs in the project are used to determine the areas where optimization can be attained. Fourth, the managers are required to lead the people assigned the project at every point in time hence, needing them to exercise strong affirmative management potentials that would allow for the moving of the disparate project elements in the same direction (Kerzner, 2013). Fifth, managers are challenged in the sense that they are required to monitor the costs, performance and the efficiency of all the elements in the project.

To achieve this, they are required to exercise judgment and good leadership in determining the problems and the possible solutions that can be facilitated. Finally, project managers are usually under huge pressure to ensure that the projects are completed within the allocated costs and schedule, as this is what would form the basis for their evaluation (Vanhoucke, 2012).ReferencesKerzner, H. (2013). Project management: A systems approach to planning, scheduling, and controlling. Hoboken, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.Pinto, J. K.

, & Venkataraman, R. R. (2013). Cost and value management in projects. Hoboken, N.J: Wiley.Vanhoucke, M. (2012). Project Management with Dynamic Scheduling: Baseline Scheduling, Risk Analysis and Project Control. Berlin: Springer Berlin.