Project Time Management Essay

As project manager, you are actively leading the Green Computing Research Project team in developing a schedule. You and Ben found three internal people and one new hire to fill the positions on the project team as follows: Matt was a senior technical specialist in the corporate IT department located in the building next to yours and Ben’s. He is an expert in collaboration technologies and volunteers in his community helping to organize ways for residents to dispose of computers, printers, and cell phones. Teresa was a senior systems analyst in the IT department in a city 500 miles away from your office. She just finished an analysis of virtualization of server resources for her office, which has responsibility for the company’s data center. James was a senior consultant in the strategic research department in a city 1,000 miles away from your office. He has a great reputation as being a font of knowledge and excellent presenter. Although he is over 60, he has a lot of energy. Le was a new hire and former colleague of Ben’s. She was working in Malaysia, but she planned to move to your location, starting work about four weeks after the project started. Le has a lot of theoretical knowledge in green computing, and her doctoral thesis was on that topic. While waiting for everyone to start working on your project, you talked to several people working on other projects under the Environmental Technologies Program and did some research on green computing. You can use a fair amount of the work already done on telecommuting, and you have the name of a consulting firm to help with that part of your project, if needed. Ito and Ben both suggested that you get up to speed on available collaboration tools since much of your project work will be done virtually. They knew that Matt would be a tremendous asset for your team in that area. You have also contacted other IT staff to get detailed information on your company’s needs and plans in other areas of green computing. You also found out that there is a big program meeting in England next month that you and one or two of your team members should attend. It is a three-day meeting, plus travel. Recall that the Green Computing Research Project is expected to be completed in six months, and you and your four team members are assigned full-time to this project. Your project sponsor, Ben, has made it clear that delivering a good product is most important, but he also thinks you should have no problem meeting  your schedule goal. He can authorize additional funds, if needed. You have decided to hire a part-time editor/consultant, Deb, whom you know from a past job to help your team produce the final reports and project proposals. Your team has agreed to add a one-week buffer at the end of the project to ensure that you finish on time or early. Tasks 1. Review the WBS and Gantt chart you created for Tasks 5 and 6 in Part 2. Propose three to five additional activities you think should be added to help you estimate resources and durations. Write a one-page paper describing these new activities. 2. Identify at least four milestones for this project. Write a one-page paper describing each milestone using the SMART criteria. 3. Using the Gantt chart created for Task 6 in Part 2, and the new activities and milestones you proposed in Tasks 1 and 2 above, estimate the task durations and enter dependencies as appropriate. Remember that your schedule goal for the project is six months. Print the Gantt chart and network diagram. 4. Write a one-page paper summarizing how you would assign people to each activity. Include a table or matrix listing how many hours each person would work on each task. These resource assignments should make sense given the duration estimates made in Task 3 above. 5. Assume that your project team starts falling behind schedule. In several cases, it is difficult to find detailed information on some of the green computing technologies, especially financial data. You know that it is important to meet or beat the six-month schedule goal, but quality is most important. Describe contingency strategies for making up lost time and avoiding schedule slips in the future. After reviewing the work breakdown structure (WBS) and Gantt chart, three additional activities are being proposed. The addition of these activities will assist with estimating resources and durations. This project will benefit from the identification of four milestones throughout the project. Using these milestones as markers for time, budget, and personnel resources, the project will be kept on track. These milestones will be developed using the SMART criteria outlined in the text (Schwalbe, 2014). The identification of these milestones is the first added activity. The second activity to be  added is the contingency plan. The contingency plan will outline strategies for making up lost time and remaining on schedule for the remainder of the project.