PROJECT SCHEDULING and COST

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Part 1:  600 words MINIMUM

Management of Small Projects

• Develop your small acquisition project schedule using MS Project (tasks, predecessors, duration, and resources assigned).

• Copy a screen print of the schedule and Gantt chart into this shell.

• Copy a screen print of the critical path network diagram, or of the Gantt screen of the Tracking Gantt view showing the critical path into this shell.

  Part 2: 600 WORDS MINIMUM

• Acquisition Project Guidelines

  • Update the project plan and Gantt Chart with acquisition project activities with MS Project, and copy it into this section.

  • Develop a request for proposal (RFP) template for the acquisition project with the elements discussed in the Discussion Board for this week.

  • Develop a table with the vendor evaluation criteria.

  • Diagram and describe the vendor status update process.

    PART 3: 1250 WORDS MINIMUM

    Costing Methods and Tools

• Select 2 of the costing methods, and discuss why they will support developing a realistic budget.

• Provide an example of computations for a few of the activities for the 2 selected methods.

• Fill in a table similar to the example table so that your 2 different total project budgets are based on the 2 selected methods.

• Discuss what type of contingency budget you will put in place based on the 2 budgets to mitigate an underestimation.

  You will be responsible for using your plan that you developed in Weeks 2 and 3 to estimate your budget for your key assignment project. You should apply 2 of the above methods to determine a worst-case scenario budget. Please put your calculations in a spreadsheet similar to the following:

   

   

  Part 5: 600 WORDS MINIMUM

• Earned Value Management System

  • Discuss how an earned value analysis will be utilized for this project or Key Assignment, including the formulas to compute earned value analysis (EVA).

  • Cover the following 4 scenarios and what you should do:

    • Behind schedule and over budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a graph.

    • Ahead of schedule and on budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a sample graph.

    • Behind schedule and on budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a sample graph.

    • Ahead of schedule and under budget: Include a sample calculation that would trigger this interpretation, along with a sample graph.

  • Discuss for each of the above situations how you compute the final cost and end date if nothing changes with its present state.

• Overall Cost and Schedule Performance

  • Discuss how you will monitor progress.

  • Discuss what metrics, reports, and graphs you will use to monitor progress.

  • Discuss how they would determine the cause of the variation.

  • Discuss how you will respond to deviations; (specifically around schedule compression and a contingency budget).