Project Management Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

Problem Statement

B&W a software company is working on the development of a software name “forecasto” that will benefit the fresh businesses to plan for their potential product development projects easily and to estimate a correct time duration with which the businesses will pass through during their project initiation phase. The project manager is highly concerned over the time allocated for the development of this software as they wants to protect their idea and to enjoy the first mover advantage in the market within their limited financial arrangements. To estimate the time duration for project completion and to build a realistic cost analysis related to the time allocated for the development and implementation of the software, the project manager is using critical path methodology with the help of probability and program evaluation reviewing technique analysis.

Introduction

B&W is a software development house that develops and supply multiple kinds of software to the different companies and firms. B&W conducts their marketing and sales through electronic marketing that is through the internet and serves in the software as a retail store for software products. The company is designing this software for new businesses that essentially requires a helping hand in the form of either human resources or a software that would conduct market research efficiently on their behalf. B&W a reputable name In the retail industry is going to establish an internet based system that would effectively gather data from market for a perfect market analysis.

The management has allocated a time frame more or less equal to 8.75 months or approximately 35 weeks to make the software in useful form. However, there a few steps in the making of the software that needs to be completed in a short span of time so that the spare time will be given to other more important activities. One of the most important task that requires a large amount of attention from the project manager is the resource allocation of time and cost management for each activity exist in the project. B&W‘s management wants to accomplish this software development activity in the most possible short period of time and also wanted to know the chances of this project to be competed in the minimum estimated time. Philip the project manager concentrates on the reductions of estimated time and on the calculation of the increased cost which will be helpful in reducing the completion time of each activity.

The company has estimated that the maximum period of time to complete the project will be 38 weeks approximately however the management wants to finish the development and implementation of the product and to wind up the entire project within 35 weeks for which the company wants to estimate the additional cost incurred to speed up the work related to these activities.

The company has used the critical path method and identifies 38 weeks to be the longest rout to complete the project. For this the company has calculated critical path that is

= A + C + D + E + F + J + K

= 3 + 6 + 8 + 8 + 5 + 5 + 3 = 38

THE CRITICAL PATH DIAGRAM

Activities on critical path

However the management of the company needs to reduce the time duration of the project to 35 weeks, for which the company is willing to spend additional cost that will going to be the crash cost for each activity that is contributing more time to the longest path.

To calculate the crash cost per week for each activity present on the critical path. We will start by calculating the allowable crash time, which provides us the time needed to reduce from each activity’s estimated time, so that the task could be accomplished on the desirable deadline assigned by the management.

Allowable Crash Time = (Normal Time – Crash Time)................

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