Case Dragonfly

Case:Dragonfly Group 34

Intro.
We started with a simple Gantt Chart & Project Activity Network Diagram.
Then we calculated the critical path out of it and cross checked it with Microsoft Project software.
We reduced the duration of the critical path by using the scenarios S1 and S2 and found new critical paths in addition to the one we already had.
We also calculated feeding buffer and project buffer to account for any uncertainty.
Budget was calculated keeping in mind all these things.
In the end, we discussed some weaknesses and the strengths of our solution.
10/21/09 Group 34

Intro .
Duration is 10 weeks excluding 2 days, i.e. 68 days. ( because meeting was held on Wednesday by Mr. Sam & deadline already started from Monday )
We are considering Saturdays as working days i.e. duration = 58 days .
Initially interdependencies are not considered.
We are considering mean values of activity duration, due to the statistical fluctuations( CCPM paper ).
Tackling uncertainty in activities duration is done by applying project buffer, feeding buffer and buffer management methods .
10/21/09 Group 34

Gantt Chart Representation(with critical paths) for 57 Days 10/21/09 Group 34

Project Activity Network
In the figure shown, the schedule was 57 days and we were able to determine the critical path and
Later according to that we will reduce the duration of the activities in the critical path.
In this case our critical path contains A1-A2-A4-A5-A8-A9-A10 chain of activities and we have a definite value of slack or float in activities A3, A6 and A7.
10/21/09 Group 34

Gantt chart after applying S1 and S2,Project Buffer 10/21/09 Group 34

Project Buffer of 5 days
Scenarios S1 and S2 are used to speedup the tasks A4 and A5 to decrease the project scheduled duration by 4 days to have 5 days in total for project buffer to tackle the uncertainty in the activities duration estimation.
We are only taking 5 days for project buffer due to the dead line restrictions but a usual project buffer would be 25% of the whole project duration( 25% of 53 = 13days )
10/21/09 Group 34

Feeding Buffer 4 (days) A7
Since several critical paths had emerged after reduction of the original plan, we applied the feeding buffer method to task A7 only as it is the only activity that has a float of 4 days .
10/21/09 Group 34

Cost Budget without time improvement and buffers
The cost for the initial budgeting without taking into considerations the time improvement and completing the project in predicted 57 days .
10/21/09 Group 34 Activity Cost (1000 Euros) A1 15 A2 3 A3 8 A4 140 A5 12 A6 10 A7 22 A8 23 A9 90 A10 22 TOTAL 345

Cost Budget with Time Improvement
The cost estimated after taken into account the time improvements applied to activities A4 and A5
This increases the overall project cost by 11% to the one estimated earlier
10/21/09 Group 34 Activity Cost (1000 Euros) A1 15 A2 3 A3 8 A4 160( 140+20) A5 30(12+18) A6 10 A7 22 A8 23 A9 90 A10 22 TOTAL 383

Cost Budget with Buffer Consideration
Project buffer cost :
We consider that 5 activities are been carried out simultaneously for 5 days.
i.e. 5 x 5 x 2000 = Euros 50,000 extra to be added in the cost budget
Feeding buffer cost:
As only A7 activity is a Non-Critical activity, we are adding the Feeding Buffer of 4 days with an increase in cost Euro 2000/ day (Euro 8000).
Overall buffer cost :
So there is an overall increase of Euros 58,000 to the budget in order to tackle the uncertainty
Total Euros 383,000 + Euros 58,000 = Euros 441,000
Increases of 22%.
10/21/09 Group 34

Interdependency
DSM shows that how much our development process is anticipating the need of rework.
The interdependency of A4 and A9 is way far from the diagonal and we can assume that it won’t require the rework if we take some precautions like increasing the flow of information between different activity owners , also in our case, re-arranging of sequence of tasks doesn’t help much as we are left with somewhat the same scenario! And that’s why we are not taking the A4 and A9 interdependency.
10/21/09 Group 34

Evaluation
Strengths:
We are completing the project before the due time line.
Only 2 scenarios are used to reduce the critical path to tackle the uncertainty.
The solution includes the feeding buffer and project buffer to account for any uncertainty.
We have calculated everything on the basis of mean of BCV and WCV.
We have emphasized on the increased flow of information and decoupling of tasks in order to avoid the iterations caused by interdependencies.
Weaknesses:
We have included Saturdays as weekdays.
In reducing the critical path we added two more critical paths.
We were not able to account for the full project buffer according to the tight deadline.
In DSM, we were not able to re-arrange tasks such that the probability of the iteration would reduced.
We have reduced the duration of the project but in return our cost has increased while the uncertainty should decrease as well.
We haven’t taken the interdependency of A4 and A9 into consideration.
10/21/09 Group 34

Case Dragonfly

by mukul joshi

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