1. Your project is about is about two thirds done when the site engineer reports to you (Project Manager) that due to inherent complexities a certain deliverable will be delayed as they work through the solution. He makes a request for this new work to be added to the scope and schedule of your project. You work with the engineer to analyse the impact of this change to cost, and write up a change request for approval from the steering committee. Please provide the sequential steps you take next.
2. Reducing the project duration increases the risk of being late. Explain.
3. What are the advantages and disadvantages of reducing project scope to accelerate a project? What can be done to reduce the disadvantages?
4. What are the major differences between managing negative risks and managing positive risks (opportunities)? (5 Marks)
5. What are the differences between bottom-up and top-down estimating approaches? Under what conditions would you prefer one over the other?
6. Other than culture, what other organizational factors should be used to determine which project management structure should be used?
7. How are projects linked to the strategic plan?
8. You are a project manager hired on a contract to jump in and immediately take over management of a failing project. The project involves implementation of a new student portal (similar to Moodle) at University XYZ. Project started in January 2022 and now is March 26th and milestones have been missed and stakeholders are not happy. Upon review of the current state, the new project management team determines that there are a number of security vulnerabilities that need to be addressed and were not captured in the project plan/wbs. There are also concerns that that the original budget of $1,500,000 capital (mainly for software and support) $100,000 of expense for training to implement the solution is not adequate, because there are allot of legacy servers that need to be replaced, and aging fleet of desktops currently in use by the Faculty at the university. The project needs to be tested, piloted, and rolled out to the students and faculty prior to Fall term 2022. Additionally university wants to incorporate a number of new features such as integration with Microsoft Teams and a single sign-on and ability for instructors to provide feedback on group based assignments to all team member and not just the person who posted the assignment. The current limited KPIs based on the first 3 months of the project are:
CPI = 0.45
SPI = 0.75
Actual Cost (Capital) = 1,200,000 (software purchased)
Actual Cost (Expense) = 0
Based on the information provided above please provide the steps you would take the address the concerns highlighted above and delivering the project prior to September 6, 2022.
9. Briefly explain how learning curves can help improve the cost estimating process.
10. Your project entails upgrade enhancement of your company’s document management system within budget and by a certain top-down driven delivery date. Explain factor that need to be considered in measuring the projects overall success? (5 Marks)
