“Hand In Assignment – Week 3”

Introduction & Project Background

The week’s situation provided good example of an IT project in which during the “execution” phase,
changes occurred internally and required to be implemented in the project on the request of “Sales
head” (Week 3, UOL, 2012).The project is so far executed as per the schedule being made according
to the main scope is being covered and the complete requirements are being constructed in form of
certain specifications . The work is progressing according to the “Work Breakdown Structure (WBS)”
(Wysocki, 2009), being made on the basis of the data provided in the weekly notes (Week3, UOL,
2012). See table below:

Table 1: “WBS”, Source: Week 3 Notes (UOL, 2012)

All the above tasks are being execute with a “Finish-to-start (FS)” relationship in between them
(Sanghera, 2010; Wysocki, 2009). This relationship has been used in making of the “Gantt Chart” with
the help if MS Project 2010 attached with this paper.
“Part 1 or “Original Project”

In this week’s scenario the “Original Project” is considered as the original case in which the above
listed tasks are being assigned to the responsible resources with allocated costs are also being
considered according to the tables below.

Table 2: “Resource allocation table”, Source: Week 3 Notes (UOL, 2012)

Table 3: “Cost Table - Resources”, Source: Week 3 Notes (UOL, 2012)

The complete project schedule is being made in the form of a MS project file with the following
assumptions as minimum :

 Project starts on 20th October 2009 (week 3, UOL , 2012)

 Working days per week = 5 (Monday to Friday)
 Working hours per day = 8 hrs.
 All costs are in USD ($)
 Holidays or non-working days as per the case study (week 3, UOL , 2012)

All the above listed assumptions along with the tasks, resources and tasks are used as the input for
constructing the “Gantt Chart” for this case, snapshots for which are being placed below:
Snapshot 1 & 2 : Gantt chart - “Original Project”
Snapshot 3 & 4 : Gantt chart - “Original Project”
The following conclusion or results are being made from the structured schedule with the help of MS
Project :

1. The finish date of the original project is 03rd March 2010

2. Total number of days required for project Completion is 97 days
3. Total Cost for the Original project as per the schedule = $51,080.00 only

All these figures are also being highlighted in the snapshots below for the “Project Statistics & Project
Summary”.

Snapshot 5 & 6 : Project Statistics + Summary - “Original Project”

“Process for following & Reviewing Change Request”

As per Sanghera, (2010, pp.308), “Change request” is an input to “Integrated Change Control” where
some of the tools and techniques are being used to handle that which gives an up to date “PMP” in the
end. See fig. below.

Snapshot 7:: Overview- integrated change control process, Source : Sanghera (2010, pp.309)

For any project whether it is construction or IT, changes are inevitable. There are many instances
which leads to emergence of the changes & in this case they are being emerged by the “head of
department” (Week 3, UOL, 2012). The controlling of any changes in a project is being done by
managing its impact to the project plan, cost & schedule implementation. (Sanghera, 2010)

During a “change control process”, there are two separate reviews being required which are as
follows:

1. Validation of the change proposal being made shall be justified

2. Accessibility of the impact due to change on the project

Figure below gives an idea of “change control process”

In the given scenario, the first step for making of a formal “change request” which will be done with
the help of a “Change request form”, template of which needs to be generated at the beginning of the
project. The Project manager shall review this form very carefully before submitting for approval and
shall contain the following as minimum :

 Name & contact of change originator – Head of sales deptt. in this case
 Date of submission – 18th December after completion of task 8.0 “Client feedback”
 Description addressing the change
 Change descriptions & justification
 Date required for implementation of change
 Type of change i.e. category
 Change Impact on scope, schedule & costs
 Status boxes (Approved / Rejected / Delayed) (Sanghera, 2010)
 Date & Signature for Project manager
 Date & Signature for “Change Control Board”
 Fig. 1 “Change Request Form”, Source : “Own Organisation” (n.d.)

After the submission and review of the above form, the expected time for approval is 14 days in total.
After the acceptance or approval of the changes, the project manager is required to :-

1. Update the project plan with respect to all the changes by adjustment of the dates, costs,
dependencies etc.
2. Filling in the “change request log” (Sanghera, 2010) & track the same till it’s fully
implemented. This log has to be updated regularly after execution of the changes in the “PMP”
& other documents. A sample log register is being shown below.

Table 1 “Change request log”, Source : “Own Organisation” (n.d.)

Thus, with the help of the above methods, changes can be process, reviewed and tracked for this
project.
“Optional or Changed Case”

Now after the approval of all the “change requests”, implementation is required in the project plan
which will affect the overall schedule and costs of this project. This is best possible with the help of
updating the “Gantt Chart” for the original project with all the similar basic assumptions and some
additional data or values are also added which are being listed below (Week, 3, UOL, 2012) :-

 Task 1.0 to 8.0 are 100 % complete

 Status of the project is set after the completion date of task 8.0 i.e. 17th Dec. 2009
 Two extra tasks are being added as compared to the original project, due to the change requests
which are:-
i. Task 9.0 – Change Requests with a duration of 14 days
ii. Task 11.0 – Testing of the modified database module as per the approved change
requests with a total duration of 5 days.
 5 extra days are added for updating the database module
 4 extra days are assumed for writing up the support module. (Task 12.0)
 3 extra days are assumed for testing of the support module. (Task 13.0)
 5 more days are added for writing the high-level functions. (Task 14.0)
 5 more days are added for testing the high-level functions. (Task 15.0)

Special Notes for above assumptions:

A. The total durations provided in the case study (Week 3, UOL, 2012) for the “support Modules”
& “high level modules”, has been split up between the write up and testing tasks.
B. All the above modifications in the plan leaded to the re-numbering of the tasks after number
8.0. Thus the total number of tasks become 17 in place of 15 in “original project”. Al

Below are the modified snapshots of the “Gantt Chart” for the Second Case:
Snapshot 8 & 9 : Gantt chart - “Second Case- including changes”
Snapshot 10 & 11 : Gantt chart - “Second Case- including changes”
The following conclusion or results for the changed project are being made from the structured
schedule with the help of MS Project :

1. The finish date of the changed project is 05th May 2010

2. Total number of days required for changed project Completion is 137 days
3. Total Cost for the Changed project as per the schedule = $57,280.00 only
4. Variance in the cost : $ (57,280 – 51,080) = $6,200 only.
5. Days in Variance : 40 days

All these figures are also being highlighted in the snapshots below for the “Project Statistics & Project
Summary”.

Snapshot 12 & 13 : Project Statistics + Summary - “Changed Project”

“Conclusion”

As per the good change management practices and proper follow up of the procedures, project can be
handled in a proper way with a proper communication means with all the involved stakeholders in the
project. This is what we are learning in this module.

Regards

Kunal Chopra

Student ID: 16064926

References:

Making of Gantt Chart with the help of Microsoft project 2010, available from:
http://www.microsoft.com/project/en-us/project-management.aspx

Own organization, (n.d.), ‘change request form and change request log’

Sanghera, D. P.,(2010). ‘PMP In Depth: Project Management Professional Study Guide for the PMP
Exam’, 2nd Edition, Course technology PTR.

University of Liverpool/ Laurate online education (2012), ‘Notes for the assignment for week 3’,
[online], Available from: University of Liverpool Blackboard:
https://elearning.uol.ohecampus.com/webapps/portal/frameset.jsp?tab_id=_2_1&url=%2fwebapps%2f
blackboard%2fexecute%2flauncher%3ftype%3dCourse%26id%3d_1340119_1%26url%3d
(accessed 23rd Sep 2012).

Wysocki,R.K.,(2009), ‘Effective Project management: Traditional, Agile, Extreme’, Fifth Edition,

Wiley Publishing Inc.