The Case study
Background
Xyzzy is a corporation that was formed to merge three different financial institutions. Each of the three financial institutions involved in the merger already had systems that complied with legislative requirements and had systems that allowed investors to monitor their investments and engage in regular trading. However, each of the original institutions had their own internal processes, financial systems, programming standards, databases etc. The new corporation is quite large, and given its size, it is not surprising that there are a diverse range of investors. Some of the investors hardly ever bother checking on their investments, while others monitor them regularly and engage in regular trading.
The Chief Executive of Xyzzy recognised that the future of the new corporation depended very much on the development of a new financial system to be used throughout Xyzzy. Given the importance of the new system, a project manager (David Grey) was appointed to manage the project. David had extensive project management experience and had successfully managed a number of similar projects.
Initial Data
After one week, David finalised a draft organisation chart. This showed that there would be a need for staff from several specialist areas. He arranged a meeting with the Human Resources Manager (Michael Brown) to proceed with appointments of “section leaders” for each specialist area. Michael agreed with the chart and arranged for someone from HR to help David with the development of position descriptions for the staff required.
The positions are to be advertised internally for three weeks. Another 2 weeks are to be allowed for interview processes and 2 weeks for the staff to be released from their current positions before they can commence on the project (i.e. a total of 7 weeks to appoint “section leaders”).
The following table shows the specialist areas and number of staff in each area (including the section leaders).
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Section
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Number of Section
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$/hour
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Staff (including the
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section leaders)
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Operations (OP)
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2
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$80
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Analysts (AN)
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3
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$95
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Database (DB)
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2
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$90
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Software Engineers (SE)
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3
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$90
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Telecommunications (TC)
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1
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$85
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Security(SEC)
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1
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$90
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Conversion Team (CT)
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3
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$60
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Table 1: Specialist Areas (Sections)
Note:
•Although there will be “section leaders”, assume that all staff members in a section have the same salary and can be assigned to any of the tasks requiring expertise from their area.
•In the table above abbreviations are given for each section resource. For example, a software engineer is abbreviated to SE.
•Assume that (apart from holidays) the staff work a 40 hour week from Monday to Friday (i.e. a 5 day week with 8 hour days). This means that in table 2 below one week equates to 5 days (Mon-Fri).
Assume that David will meet with the section leaders on their first day to explain the importance of the new system and to provide them with the preliminary details of the project. They will be required to provide any modifications within 1 week of that initial meeting. Assume that at the end of the week David has the information provided in the following table:
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Task Name
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Description
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Predecessor(s)
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Resource
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To be completed
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and
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before the
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Duration
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milestone
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Estimates
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Xyzzy Financial System
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1 Recruitment
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1.1 Recruitment of
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This is to be the start of
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start of project
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7 weeks.
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section leaders
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David’s schedule. It
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schedule
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Note that no
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assumes that the
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(Milestone 1 –
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resources
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charter has been signed,
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M1) (start date:
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are allocated
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David has developed the
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5th June 2017)
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to this task
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organisation chart and
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although HR
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the position descriptions
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staff and the
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for Section leaders have
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PM will be
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been developed.
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involved in
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this task.
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1.2 Appointment of other
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1.1
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2 weeks.
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section staff
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Note that no
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resources
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are allocated
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to this task
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although HR
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staff, section
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leaders and
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the PM will
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be involved
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in this task.
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2 Development of
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Common Standards
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2.1 Database Standards
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This will involve
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1.2
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2 person-
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consultation with other
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weeks of DB
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members of the team
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and IT staff from the
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three initial
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corporations.
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Page | 5
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