WHERE THE STUDENT TAKES ON THE ROLE OF PROJECT MANAGER

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WHERE THE STUDENT TAKES ON THE ROLE OF PROJECT MANAGER

Introduction and Student Guide

The case study simulates a project management scenario where the student takes on the role of project manager. The case information is not complete so where necessary students will have to make assumptions and/or seek clarification from their tutor/lecturer.

To assist students in their solution development, the following information is provided:

• Product development case description
• Specific assessment questions that must be answered
• Information regarding the submission of the assessment
• Marking guide

Software Development Case Description

Software Sense is a leading software development company delivering comprehensive solutions in application development, systems integration and software testing. The company’s headquarter is located in Brisbane and the company has over 20 years’ experience in custom software development for medium to large enterprises. The company has recently won a contract to develop a 2D-arcade games framework for a global entertainment company.

You are appointed as a project manager to manage the development and production of the new software framework. Several people are involved in this project including you as the project manager, Mr George as the Director of Software Development, and your project team members consisting of three software engineers, two technical writers and two test engineers.

Your task is to generate the project schedule and allocate the resources provided to you using the information given regarding the milestones and the work breakdown structure shown in Table 1, and the resources and costs given in Table 2.

Milestones

The following milestones have to be taken into account by your team members.

5. M1 Contract signed (This is the start of the project after the contract has been signed). The start date of the project is on 7/12/2015.
6. M2 Design approved. This milestone occurs after the design review meeting (task 1.7). The design must be approved before the project can proceed with the development tasks. For the purpose of this assignment, you can assume that the design will be approved at the review meeting.
7. M3 Test plan approved. This milestone marks the point at which the test plan has been developed and approved.
8. M4 Interface development tasks complete
9. M5 Engine development tasks complete
10. M6 Testing complete. This milestone occurs after all testing has been completed.
11. M7 Customer acceptance. This milestone occurs after task 7.3 Customer acceptance meeting has been completed.

Table 1- Work Breakdown Structure

Additional Information

In addition to the work breakdown structure, you have collected the following information:

• The following public holidays are to be observed in the project: 25 December 2015 - Christmas Day, New Year’s Day - 1 January 2016, 26 January 2016 - Australia Day and 25 March 2016 - Good Friday.
• The booking/organisation of the review of design meeting (task 1.7) has to be carried out at the least one week prior to review of design meeting (task 1.7).
• The booking/organisation of the review of test plan meeting (task 1.8) has to be carried out at the least one week prior to review of test plan meeting (task 1.8).
• The booking/organisation of the customer acceptance meeting (task 7.3) has to be carried out at the least two weeks prior to customer acceptance meeting (task 7.3).

Available Resources and Costs

The pay rates and maximum number of full time resources available for your project are shown in the following table:

Table 2- Resources and Costs

The software engineers, technical writers and testers work a 40 hour week from Monday to Friday (i.e. a 5 day week with 8 hour days). You should enter the number of each type of available resources as a percentage on the resource table (i.e. 1SE would be 100%, 3 SEs would be 300%).

There may be items not addressed in the information above and you may need to make some assumptions to complete your schedule and budget. Make sure that you list any assumptions you make at the beginning of your assignment submission.

Assessment Part A

1. Use Microsoft Project to develop the project schedule. You must include the resource allocation details on the schedule as well as the WBS shown in Table 1. Develop the schedule and make sure that you:

1. Have an appropriate project name at the top of the task list and have all other tasks indented below the top summary task.
2. Have the WBS shown in table 1.

• Include the milestones at the top of the task list (as this has been requested by senior management).

1. Include the resource allocation details on the schedule.
2. Resolve any resource allocation issues.

2. Identify the critical path in your schedule:

1. Make sure that the tasks on the critical path are automatically highlighted by the software in the Gantt chart view (i.e. the software should highlight bars of the CP tasks in red in your .mpp file).
2. List the tasks on the critical path in your answer to this question in the Word document.

3. Include three additional tasks in your schedule with a duration of 1 day each to do all the organisation for following meetings:

1. Design review meeting
2. Test plan meeting

• Customer acceptance meeting

You must manually highlight these two tasks in yellow using the “background colour” icon on the task ribbon. This is to allow your marker to locate them easily.

1. Based on your schedule, when is the latest date that you need to begin organising the test plan meeting?
2. Based on your schedule, when is the latest date that you need to begin organising the customer acceptance meeting?

4. Write a memo to Mr George, the director of software development outlining:

1. The expected duration and completion date of the project.
2. The estimated labour costs of the project. This information must be presented in tabular form with the total cost for each of the work packages, the costs for any meetings and the final total for the whole project.

5. List two tasks you would target if you were asked to shorten the project duration.
6. Explain your reasons for choosing to target those tasks.
7. For each task, suggest what you would do to shorten the task.

6. List 2 important activities that the project manager needs to perform in the planning phase of the project. Describe one of these activities in more detail.

7. Describe what strategies you need to adopt to ensure that the project is completed on time. (Describe in detail the role of the project manager in this process and what analysis needs to be carried out.)

8. If you found that the project was going to be delivered late to the customer, what would you do? Make specific suggestions in your answer.

Assessment Part B

You are informed by the software engineers that tasks 2.2 Database construction is going to take an extra 3 person-weeks and that task 3.2 Image handler is going to take 1 extra person-week to complete.

Based on the additional information given above, complete the following tasks:

1. Copy your Part A .mpp file to a Part B file and amend the project schedule incorporating the new estimated times for the tasks above (2.2 and 3.2). You need to resolve any resource over-allocation issues caused by the introduction of these changes. You also need to highlight the rows of these changes in green.

2. a)   What is the duration of the project now?
3. When is the completion date of the project now?
4. Discuss whether the length of the project is now shorter/longer/the same in comparison to Part A.

3. Describe the impact of each of these changes upon the project. For each change, explain how it has impacted on the project schedule and project budget.

Assessment Part C

You are advised that one of the software engineers has resigned and there is going to be one less software engineer to work on the project.

1. Copy your Part B .mpp file to a Part C .mpp file. Amend the resource sheet in Part C so that there are now only 2 software engineers available and resolve any resource over-allocation issues.
2. Discuss how you resolve resource over-allocation issues.
3. Explain whether this change to the number of software engineers have any impact on the project finish date.
4. Does this change have any impact on the project budget? Provide specific details.

Assumptions

You are free to make any assumptions necessary to complete the assignment. However each assumption must be justified and stated clearly in your assessment word document. Marks will be deducted for any unreasonable assumption or for stating an assumption and then ignoring it in your assignment.

Submission of Assessment

The assignment is to be submitted as 4 separate files using the electronic assignment submission system that can be accessed from the link on the course website. The four files to be submitted are as follows:

1. The Word document with the assumptions and answers to the questions for Part A, Part B and Part C.
2. The three Microsoft project files created for Part A, Part B and Part C. Please ensure that these files are named clearly as Part A.mpp, Part B.mpp and Part C.mpp respectively. No zip file is allowed for the submission.