Caswell Hector, Jamie L. Carter, Kisha Bullard, Rachel Scheffler

RESOURCES AND BUDGET

Resource and Budget

Caswell Hector, Jamie L. Carter, Kisha Bullard, Rachel Scheffler

CMGT/410

October 5, 2015

Myrna Bravo

Introduction

A recent promotion by A-Team Printing which offered five hundred business cards to its customers within five days proved to be a success. The company sold more business cards than it had expected. While a successful promotion is almost always considered a positive, A-Team struggled with execution the orders within the time promised. After reviewing the struggles the company faced during the promotion, management has decided to upgrade their supply chain software. The software upgrade hopes to allow for more collective and cohesive communications between departments and will add value from the time an order is placed until the transportation for the order is completed. This value will come from more visibility, reduce the percentage of late orders, error reduction and allow for automatic order generation.

A-Team Printing project aims to produce high quality products during the software transition and also provide professional services throughout each project phase and its production operations. A-Team Printing expects to perform the appropriate resources and equipment for the project’s success by carrying out plans for development, integration, testing and deployment of the new system. The project has $10,000 of available funding with an integrated project team consisting of the sponsor, project manager, and other team members (technical manager, business analyst, technical experts, trainers and end user employees). The company will carry out a value-driven approach through regularly scheduled meetings.

A project team has been set up and planning is well underway. A task list has been approved, a business requirements document has been established, and the project team is now working on confirming a timeline and a breakdown of costs.

Estimating Timelines

Accurately estimating the timeframe on a project is crucial to staying within budget. Therefore these two steps are often completed simultaneously. When assigning a resource to a task, such as an internal asset like an employee, the number of hours that employee will dedicate to the task is essentially a dollar amount. Each hour an asset spends on a project is an hour they are not dedicating to their normal activities. If more hours are required than planned for , the project can quickly go over budget. Additionally, if any tasks are outsourced to third parties, their estimates will most likely include the time they expect to complete what they’ve been hired for.

One area of time estimating that is easy to calculate incorrectly is the time it takes for approvals. Most projects require that transitional phases go through rigorous approvals before moving on to the next step. This can include the time it takes for testing and error management due to issues brought to light through testing. If enough time for these errors and the approval to move on is not given, a project can go over. To mitigate risk, a project manager should allot buffer time to allow for unexpected events include and not limited to priority of high profile tasks, accidents, holidays, time off and illness of key staff or stakeholders, breakdowns of missed deliveries by third parties, and quality control rejections.

The PERT formula for estimating time can be helpful when establishing the baseline for the project. It considers the time it will most likely to take to complete a task as well as the best and worst case scenarios. A mathematical formula is applied to the estimates which will result in a safe final estimate per task.

Resources

The resources for this project include both internal and external resources. Most of the footwork for the research will be handled by internal resources due to the sensitive nature of the project. However, some pieces such as the web development will be sourced to external resources. A-Team Printing realizes that even though some employees have experience with web design and integration, the company specialized in printing and therefore is better off hiring professionals to ensure a smooth transition.

The budget includes new hardware that will be necessary to operate the new software, and several hours of training for end users. A-Team has made the decision to replace all of its potentially outdated hardware during the transition due to the unique opportunity provided by the upgrade. This is an extension of the budget for the project, but by including it now it will reduce additional transitional costs in the future.

The initial purchase of the software is a major item on the budget; but this purchase includes years of maintenance and developments to support the growing printing firm. The upgrade is considered a long term investment.

Conclusion

The work breakdown schedule should now show all tasks, their timeframes calculated using the PERT formula, the resources assigned, and the total cost per line item. Each piece of data has carefully been considered by the project manager to provide a cohesive and easy to follow plan for implementing supply chain software for A-Team Printing. The PERT formula has provided a buffer on the time frame which not only allots extra time on all tasks, but calculates the budget slightly higher than forecasted due to the dollar amounts calculated for internal resources. The project should be completed before schedule and under budget.

References

Gingrich, Allen. "How To Estimate Time On Any Project (with the PERT Formula)." Ideas and Pixels. 3 Mar. 2012. Web. 4 Oct. 2015. < project-with-pert-formula>.

Marchewka,J.(2012).Information Technology Project Management.Providing Measurable Organizational Value.(4th ed.).John Wiley & Sons

Class participation

Paper – Rachel

Resources and costs – Jamie

Task sequencing and dependencies – Caswell

Baseline - Kisha

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