Posted: September 18th, 2017

Work Breakdown structure. (Project Management)

Section A: Defining a Project Plan

Question 1:

As the main stakeholder, ITS holds the ultimate responsibility of this project. The management has assigned the following internal staff to form a project team for the IBIS project.

1. Yourself: Project Manager. Beside overall project management, you are also in charge of liaising with government agencies to obtain the approval and permit. You will also be responsible for all project items procurement, with support from Purchasing Department.

2. Susan Sim: Software Manager: She is in charge of working with customers on user requirements studies, liaising with external software company on design and development of customised application software, overall system testing and performance monitoring.

3. Patrick Wong: Hardware and Network Manager: He is in charge of IT hardware, network and infrastructure installation and testing, with the help of subcontractor.

Your team drafted the initial list of activities in Table 3.

Note:

1. The management wants the project to start on 1st April 2015.
2. The table shows activities before grouping them according to Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), and the schedule before levelling.
3. As the project members are managers, they have staff/contractors to carry out the work; hence there is no need to resolve role resource conflicts (i.e. person A can be working on task x and y simultaneously) in the schedule. You may want to leave the Resource Names in MS Project blank.
4. All the activities are originally intended to be carried out only on weekdays which are non-public holidays.
5. The public holidays (PHs) to be marked as Non-Working Day for the project period are Good Friday on 3rd April 2015, Labour Day on 1st May 2015 and Vesak Day on 1st June 2015. ITS has adopted a standard HR policy that there will be no leave-in-lieu if the Public Holiday falls on Saturday.

You are required to:

• Design a Work Breakdown Structure (WBS), by grouping activities 2 to 19 into two (2) levels of work packages. Assume that all external contractors are to report to ITS staff.

(9 marks)

• Assemble a Responsibility Assignment Matrix based on the WBS.

(6 marks)

Question 2:

Develop a Gantt Chart for the project based on Table 3: Activity List for IBIS Project. You shall show the columns for Activities, Duration, Start Date, Finish Date and Predecessor and the Gantt Chart.

Determine the project duration, completion date and list the activities on the critical path.

Note: There is no need to group the activities by WBS in developing this Gantt Chart. You are to use Microsoft Project to work out and present the Gantt Chart. Any other format presented will results in mark reduction. You have to show the Gantt Chart on the report instead of referring the marker to an embedded file.

Section B: Managing Project Risk

Question 1:

Note: For ease of presentation, use landscape mode for your answer

(a) Evaluatethree (3) potential risks, one from each category of: External, Organisational and Project Management, by designing a Risk Assessment Matrix. You shall present your answer in the format of Table 4 shown below.

Use rating of 0 to 5 for Likelihood, Impact and Detection Difficulty.

Likelihood: 0 – Not likely to happen at all; 5 – very likely to happen

Impact: 0- No impact on project; 5 – very high impact on project

Detection Difficulty – 0 – very easy to be detected; 5 – impossible to be detected.

• For each risk identified in Q7(a), develop a response plan.

You shall present your answer in the format of Table 5