The discussion assignment provides a forum for discussing relevant topics for this week based on the course competencies covered.
For this assignment, make sure you post your initial response to the Discussion Area by the due date assigned.
To support your work, use your course and text readings and also use outside sources. As in all assignments, cite your sources in your work and provide references for the citations in APA format.
Start reviewing and responding to the postings of your classmates as early in the week as possible. Respond to at least two of your classmates. Participate in the discussion by asking a question, providing a statement of clarification, providing a point of view with a rationale, challenging an aspect of the discussion, or indicating a relationship between two or more lines of reasoning in the discussion. Complete your participation for this assignment by the end of the week.
Project Planning Tools and Controlling
Taking a step back we know the success of the project depends on the amount of attention given to resource planning. Project budgets and schedules are managed off the careful planning of the resources required to complete the project. One way to assure accuracy of the estimate for resources is to ask the team to figure out the hours.
Respond to one of the following bullet points:
- How should budgeting, scheduling, and resource loading or leveling be most logically accomplished in terms of their chronological order? How would resource-constrained scheduling help, hinder, or change your recommendations?
- What are some potential problems with the top-down and bottom-up budgeting processes? What are some ways of dealing with these potential problems? In preparing a budget, what indirect costs should be considered?
- What characteristic(s) of the critical path times makes them critical? What two factors are compared by Gantt charting? How does the Gantt chart differ in purpose from the project master schedule?
- Contrast total slack and free slack. What is the average resource load factor? How is it used to determine project completion times? What are two methods for addressing the constrained resource allocation problem?
