BUS 519 Week 7 Discussion: Planning for Unknowns

Week 7 Discussion

“Planning for Unknowns” Please respond to the following:

Evaluate your project management options in terms of schedule, performance, and cost for the following scenario. Support your evaluation.

An office building construction project is 80% complete in the southern Virginia area, when a major hurricane strikes, and stops progress on the worksite for 10 days while damage is assessed and repairs are completed. The project has a fixed budget and a completion date that cannot be moved any further to the right.

Project management options include:

Schedule:

Performance:

• Activities will be added.
• Labor workers will work overnight with provided efficient lighting if weather permitted.

Cost:

• Change will be welcomed with open arms and everyone will perform with the unmoved completion date in mind.

If I had to analyze how your strategy would be different if you had a contingency reserve budget, but still could not change the project completion date. I would review the contingency reserve budget is set in plan in case of emergency. It’s estimated with either money or time needed to address a specific risk or two. In this case, time cannot be changed, however having a contingency reserve budget would still provide some assurance that project will still be successful because it gives team members access to additional funds needed to pay suppliers, purchase supplies, pay for constructers, and what else might fall in their lap.

• Labor Workers will be hired to ensure that current employees do not receive overtime at a lower cost. New suppliers will be chosen as need and new supplies will only be ordered from the company with the best prices.

References

Larson, E., & Gray, C. (2014). Project management: The managerial process (6th Ed.). New York: McGraw Hill Education

Theresia, I feel the same way. Uncertainty is definitely why project managers are necessary to see a project all the way through, from start to finish. Managing is key to any success of a company projects and even individual projects. Everyone and especially companies have to properly plan to see the big picture, to make sure all steps are carried out accordingly, proper funding, strengths and weakness are reviewed and analyzed. As a project manager the response planning should definitely be part of the process. To add to your thought, the Response planning step of ATOM will help identify risk and select appropriate response strategy for each issue that might arise, develop specific actions that put into proactive each response strategy, with enough definition to allow effective implementers and ensures that each action is assigned to an action owner. By utilizing this approach as you stated it will help reduce project scope, to scale back the project scope, which will help project in saving time and money. Excellent points presented!

Uncertainty is why we need project management. How we manage for uncertainty is at the core of improvement of project performance getting projects done both faster and with better reliability of the promised deliverable dates and within budget. In the scenario above where we have time and budget constraints, my project management options will include: First, fast tracking which involves rearranging the logic of the project network so critical activities run in parallel (concurrently) rather than sequentially. This option is good because project members becomes creative in finding better ways to restructure sequential activities in parallel and one of the most common ways for restructuring activities is to change a finish-to-start relationship to a start-to-start relationship. This options requires close coordination among those responsible for the activities affected and confidence in the work that has been completed.

Second, is the critical chain project management (CCPM), this is a project management method derived from a management methodology called the Theory of Constraints, to help accelerate project completion.Creation of reliable and accurate schedules in project management is the first step towards project success. Using the Critical Path Method (CPM) implies calculating Early Start and Finish dates as well as Late Start and Finish dates by forward and backward analysis of the project network diagram paths. Choosing the relevant resources is usually done after identifying the path. CCPM is a technique related to scheduling analysis for network that considers task dependencies, scarcity of resources, and buffers. The main focus of CCPM is to eliminate the uncertain delays, task overestimation duration delays, and wasted internal buffers delays. In CCPM, project duration does not change even if all the activity safety margins were eliminated, because of the project buffer. Project buffer protects the project completion on the critical chain path, while feeding buffers protects the critical chain from path merging. Managing the buffer further improve the decision making of project control. In general, using CCPM will further enhance the project schedule, cost, and scope performance. Experience with CCPM projects demonstrates completion with 10% to 50% in cost and duration.

Last, reducing project scope, that is scale back the project scope, which will help project in saving time and money.

Ref: 

Larson, E., & Gray, C. (2014). Project management: The managerial process (6th Ed.). New York: McGraw Hill Education

Shirley, I conquer that it is best to plan ahead of time and give yourself a little more room so if you get finish early that is good and if you finish on time that is still in a healthy zone. I can attest to that, as an event planner along with my sister, we have to allot plenty of time prior to any type of even. Rather big or small, it is important to prioritize, schedule, and delegate throughout the project/ event. This allows for a stress free and successful project/ event for not just the planners/ project managers but also all involved to actually be able to enjoy the outcome of the project/event.

When a project manager is doing a job or assignment they have to think out side the box at times.  The reason being is that when you are doing a project anything can happen and you have to be prepared for it at any give time.  The office building is 80% done and a hurricane strikes and put a stop to the process of finishing the project.  I think that when a project is set and there is no around it it should be a way that the manager can access for more time.  The project can not get done in time because of the hurricane in the first place unless there was not much damage to the building.  The project manager should have asked for more time in the front end of the deal because no one every know what may happen in the process of a assignment.  Sometimes it is best to plan ahead of time and give yourself a little more room so if you get finish early that is good and if you finish on time that is still in a healthy zone.

David Curtin

“Planning for Unknowns” Please respond to the following:

Evaluate your project management options in terms of schedule, performance, and cost for the following scenario. Support your evaluation.

An office building construction project is 80% complete in the southern Virginia area, when a major hurricane strikes, and stops progress on the worksite for 10 days while damage is assessed and repairs are completed. The project has a fixed budget and a completion date that cannot be moved any further to the right.

            Understanding the location and time of year would have allowed for increased lag time during hurricane season, being that southern Virginia is subjectable to poor weather conditions such as hurricanes and flooding. Knowing this would have been part of the WBS and risk assessment plans from the beginning of the process. Having resided in southern Virginia for many years, this is common knowledge. Understandably, if these persuasions were not taken then upon completion of repairs and assessments were completed showing structural damage would not inhibit the process. New assessments would be needed to assess if the project could be completed for the budget that was allotted which should not be a problem because any construction will have insurance to cover all natural or unnatural disasters. Proceeding from that point would be an assessment of time needed to complete the required work. Assuming there was ample lag time built into the project this would be a minor setback thus it would be work as usual. I would bring my crew back onsite as soon as possible and instruct them to increase the pace that is needed to complete the project on time assuming that there was no lag time built into a project in a hurricane zone during that particular season.

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