Reference no: EM132542889

PPMP20007 Project Management Concepts - Central Queensland University

Problem 1:

a) You are the manager of a small resort in Central Queensland. The owners want to change the focus of the resort from a family destination to an eco-tourism resort. The following projects have been identified for the resort. Classify each one as compliance, strategic or operational and give your reason for each classification.

• Update all the smoke detectors and safety equipment to meet the new regulations
• Launch a new promotional campaignwith Qantas
• Develop 3 new nature hiking trails
• Convert the swimming pool heating system from gas to solar power

b) With the use of an example, explain what is meant by scope creep. In your answer discuss the impact of scope creep.

c) Explain why it is difficult to perform a truly independent, objective, project review even with a trainedfacilitator.Describewhat can be done to improve the likelihood of a truly independent, objective, project review.

Problem 2:
You work for a mobile phone company. Your research and development team believe that they have an affordable, innovative new idea that would be very attractive to potential customers and give your company a significant market advantage. You are to recommend the most appropriate project management structure for this project (functional structure, matrix, dedicated team). What would you recommend and why? Discuss any assumptions that you made about this scenario that lead to your recommendation. Whatadditional information would you want to have to help you make your recommendation and in what ways would that information influence your decision?

Problem 3 Compare and contrast the management of negative risks and positive risks.

Problem 4

a) In what ways is the role of the conductor of an orchestra a metaphor for the role of a project manager?

b) What aspects of the project management role are not captured by this metaphor?
(Larson & Gray, 2017)

Problem 5

a) Explain why a project manager should emphasise group rewards over individual rewards.

b) You are the project manager for a new project with a team of people who have not worked together prior to this project. You have passed the stage where people have become acquainted and have had their roles and the roles of the other team members clarified. Your expectations in terms of processes and behaviour have also been explained and everyone has been assigned their specific tasks. Although some work has commenced on the project you are observing a high degree of internal conflict and some staff are challenging some of your procedures and expectations. Explain why this might be happening and what you should do.

Problem 6

The function point count for a software project was calculated to be 1080.

a) Historical data for projects of this type indicates that six function points equals one person month. Assume that for this project it is possible for five people to work productively on the project simultaneously. What is the minimum estimated project duration for this project? Show all your working and explain each of the steps involved in calculating the minimum duration.

b) If the project must be completed in 12 months, what is the minimum number of people that will be needed for this project? You must explain your working.

c) In part (b) you calculated the minimum number of people to complete the project in 12 months. Explain why it is unlikely that you will be able to achieve the 12 month deadline with the number of workers you calculated in part (b).

Problem 7
Will Fence is a large timber and Christmas tree farmer who is attending a project management class. When the class topic came to earned value he was perplexed. He was unclear about whether or not what he does in practice is earned value.
This is what Will does:
Each summer, Will hires a crew of workers to shear fields of Christmas trees for the coming holiday season. Shearing entails having a worker use a large machete to shear the branches of the tree into a nice, cone-shaped tree. His approach is as follows:
Step 1: He counts the number of Douglas Fir Christmas trees in the field (i.e. 24,000).
Step 2: He agrees on a contract lump sum to pay for shearing for the whole field of trees (the contract is $30,000).
Step 3: When a request for partial payment for the work completed so far arrives (after 5 days work), Will counts the number of trees actually sheared(i.e. 6,000 trees). He then works out the percentage of trees actually shearedand multiplies the percentage completed by the total contract amount to calculate the partial payment to be made at that time. (For the data so far, this would be 6,000 trees out of 24000trees which means 25% of the trees have been sheared. 25% of the total contract is 25% of 30000, so the partial payment will be $7,500)

a) Is Will over, on, or below cost and is Will using earned value? Explain.

b) How can Will set up a schedule variance?
(Larson & Gray, 2017)

Problem 8
Factors that influence the successful adoption of an agile project management methodology may be categorized as follows:
• Organisational
• Group
• Individual
• Project

For each category provide at least two factors that would promote the successful adoption of an agile project management methodology.Give reasons for your answers.

Problem 9

Part (b) of this Problem refers to the network diagram below.

a) The project manager can use a network diagram like the one above to carry out a forward pass and backward pass to calculate, among other things, the ES/EF and LS/LFtimes for each of the activities in the project.

i. What additional information will the project manager be able to determine about the project schedule after performing these calculations?Why is this information important to the project manager?

ii. What else does the project manager need toknow to completethe project schedule andhow might this additional information impact on the results from part (i)? Explain.

b) This Problem refers to the network diagram at the start of this question.
i. Youare required to shorten the duration of the project in the network diagram above by 1 week less than its earliest finish time. Only the activities in the following table can be shortened (crashed). They can all be crashed by up to 2 weeks. The costs to crash each activity are shown in the table below. Activity I cannot be crashed. What activity (or activities) would you crash if you are required to shorten the project duration by one week for the lowest possible cost. You must explain your choice(s).

Activity	Cost to shorten task by 1 week
A	$3000
B	$1500
C	$1000
D	$1000
E	$800
F	$1000
G	$900
H	$4000

ii. In practice it may not be quite as straightforward to crash (shorten the duration of) a project as this exercise suggests. Explain what can complicate this process in practice.

iii. Discuss the risks associated with compressing (or crashing) projects.

Problem 10
The following table shows the currentstatus data for a project at the end of month 3.

PV (Planned Value)	EV (Earned Value)	AC (Actual Cost)	SV	CV	SPI	CPI
$18,461.54	$35,673.08	$20,673.08

If you were the project manager for this project, should you have any concerns about this data?
If yes, then
• what are your concerns?
• what might be some underlying causes?
• how might you combat these in the future?
If no, then explain why not.

Attachment:- Project Management Concepts.rar